The Complete Four Just Men

by Edgar Wallace

  He knew it was useless to try to persuade her to tell her troubles, and at closing time they left the bar together.

  ‘I’d ask you home only that might make it worse, and I don’t want to get you into any kind of bother, Mr Lucas,’ she said.

  He offered his hand. It was the first time he had done so, and she took it in her big limp palm and shook it feebly.

  ‘Very few people have shaken hands with Amelia Jones,’ thought Gonsalez, and he went back to the flat in Jermyn Street to find Manfred asleep before the fire.

  He was waiting at Paddington Station the next morning in a suit a little less shabby, and to his surprise Mrs Jones appeared dressed in better taste than he could have imagined was possible. Her clothes were plain but they effectively disguised the class to which she belonged. She took the tickets for Swindon and there was little conversation on the journey. Obviously she did not intend to unburden her mind as yet.

  The train was held up at Newbury whilst a slow up-train shunted to allow a school special to pass. It was crowded with boys and girls who waved a cheery and promiscuous greeting as they passed.

  ‘Of course!’ nodded Leon. ‘It is the beginning of the Easter holidays. I had forgotten.’

  At Swindon they alighted and then for the first time the woman gave some indication as to the object of their journey.

  ‘We’ve got to stay on this platform,’ she said nervously. ‘I’m expecting to see somebody, and I’d like you to see her, too, Mr Lucas.’

  Presently another special ran into the station and the majority of the passengers in this train also were children. Several alighted at the junction, apparently to change for some other destination than London, and Leon was talking to the woman, who he knew was not listening, when he saw her face light up. She left him with a little gasp and walked quickly along the platform to greet a tall, pretty girl wearing the crimson and white hat-ribbon of a famous West of England school.

  ‘Why, Mrs Jones, it is so kind of you to come down to see me. I wish you wouldn’t take so much trouble. I should be only too happy to come to London,’ she laughed. ‘Is this a friend of yours?’

  She shook hands with Leon, her eyes smiling her friendliness.

  ‘It’s all right, Miss Grace,’ said Mrs Jones, agitated. ‘I just thought I’d pop down and have a look at you. How are you getting on at school, miss?’

  ‘Oh, splendidly,’ said the girl. ‘I’ve won a scholarship.’

  ‘Isn’t that lovely!’ said Mrs Jones in an awe-stricken voice. ‘You always was wonderful, my dear.’

  The girl turned to Leon.

  ‘Mrs Jones was my nurse, you know, years and years ago, weren’t you, Mrs Jones?’

  Amelia Jones nodded.

  ‘How is your husband? Is he still unpleasant?’

  ‘Oh, he ain’t so bad, miss,’ said Mrs Jones bravely. ‘He’s a little trying at times.’

  ‘Do you know, I should like to meet him.’

  ‘Oh no, you wouldn’t, miss,’ gasped Amelia. ‘That’s only your kind heart. Where are you spending your holidays, miss?’ she asked.

  ‘With some friends of mine at Clifton, Molly Walker, Sir George Walker’s daughter.’

  The eyes of Amelia Jones devoured the girl and Leon knew that all the love in her barren life was lavished upon this child she had nursed. They walked up and down the platform together and when her train came in Mrs Jones stood at the carriage door until it drew out from the station and then waited motionless looking after the express until it melted in the distance.

  ‘I’ll never see her again!’ she muttered brokenly. ‘I’ll never see her again! Oh, my God!’

  Her face was drawn and ghastly in its pallor and Leon took her arm.

  ‘You must come and have some refreshment, Mrs Jones. You are very fond of that young lady?’

  ‘Fond of her?’ She turned upon him. ‘Fond of her? She – she is my daughter!’

  They had a carriage to themselves going back to Town and Mrs Jones told her story.

  ‘Grace was three years old when her father got into trouble,’ she said. ‘He had always been a brute and I think he’d been under the eyes of the police since he was a bit of a kid. I didn’t know this when I married him. I was nursemaid in a house that he’d burgled and I was discharged because I’d left the kitchen door ajar for him, not knowing that he was a thief. He did one long lagging and when he came out he swore he wouldn’t go back to prison again, and the next time if there was any danger of an alarm being raised, he would make it a case of murder. He and another man got into touch with a rich bookmaker on Blackheath. Bash used to do his dirty work for him, but they quarrelled and Bash and his pal burgled the house and got away with nearly nine thousand pounds.

  ‘It was a big race day and Bash knew there’d be a lot of money in notes that had been taken on the racecourse and that couldn’t be traced. I thought he’d killed this man at first. It wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t. He walked into the room and bashed him as he lay in bed – that was Bash’s way – that’s how he got his name. He thought there’d be a lot of enquiries and gave me the money to look after. I had to put the notes into an old beer jar half full of sand, ram in the cork and cover the cork and the neck with candle-wax so that the water couldn’t g et through, and then put it in the cistern which he could reach from one of the upstairs rooms at the back of the house. I was nearly mad with fear because I thought the gentleman had been killed, but I did as I was told and sunk the jar in the cistern. That night Bash and his mate were getting away to the north of England when they were arrested at Euston Station. Bash’s friend was killed, for he ran across the line in front of an engine, but they caught Bash and the house was searched from end to end. He got fifteen years’ penal servitude and he would have been out two years ago if he hadn’t been a bad character in prison.

  ‘When he was in gaol I had to sit down and think, Mr Lucas, and my first thought was of my child. I saw the kind of life that she was going to grow up to, the surroundings, the horrible slums, the fear of the police, for I knew that Bash would spend a million if he had it in a few weeks. I knew I was free of Bash for at least twelve years and I thought and I thought and at last I made up my mind.

  ‘It was twelve months after he was in gaol that I dared get the money, for the police were still keeping their eye on me as the money had not been found. I won’t tell you how I bought grand clothes so that nobody would suspect I was a working woman or how I changed the money.

  ‘I put it all into shares. I’m not well educated, but I read the newspapers for months, the columns about money. At first I was puzzled and I could make no end to it, but after a while I got to understand and it was in an Argentine company that I invested the money, and I got a lawyer in Bermondsey to make a trust of it. She gets the interest every quarter and pays her own bills – I’ve never touched a penny of it. The next thing was to get my little girl out of the neighbourhood, and I sent her away to a home for small children – it broke my heart to part with her – until she was old enough to go into a school. I used to see her regularly and when, after my first visit, I found she had almost forgotten who I was, I pretended that I’d been her nurse – and that’s the story.’

  Gonsalez was silent.

  ‘Does your husband know?’

  ‘He knows I spent the money,’ said the woman staring blankly out of the window. ‘He knows that the girl is at a good school. He’ll find out,’ she spoke almost in a whisper. ‘He’ll find out!’

  So that was the tragedy! Leon was struck dumb by the beauty of this woman’s sacrifice. When he found his voice again, he asked:

  ‘Why do you think he will kill you? These kind of people threaten.’

  ‘Bash doesn’t threaten as a rule,’ she interrupted him. ‘It’s the questions he’s been asking people who know me. People from Deptford who he’s
met in prison. Asking what I do at nights, what time I go to bed, what I do in the daytime. That’s Bash’s way.’

  ‘I see,’ said Leon. ‘Has anybody given him the necessary particulars?’ he asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘They’ve done their best for me,’ she said. ‘They are bad characters and they commit crimes, but there’s some good hearts amongst them. They have told him nothing.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m certain. If they had he wouldn’t be still asking. Why, Toby Brown came up from Devizes a month ago and told me Bash was there and was still asking questions about me. He’d told Toby that he’d never do another lagging and that he reckoned he’d be alive up to Midsummer Day if they caught him.’

  Leon went up to his flat that night exalted.

  ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’ asked Manfred. ‘I for my part have been lunching with the excellent Mr Fare.’

  ‘And I have been moving in a golden haze of glory! Not my own, no, not my own, Manfred,’ he shook his head, ‘but the glory of Amelia Jones. A wonderful woman, George. For her sake I am going to take a month’s holiday, during which time you can go back to Spain and see our beloved Poiccart and hear all about the onions.’

  ‘I would like to go back to Madrid for a few days,’ said Manfred thoughtfully. ‘I find London particularly attractive, but if you really are going to take a holiday – where are you spending it, by the way?’

  ‘In Devizes Gaol,’ replied Gonsalez cheerfully, and Manfred had such faith in his friend that he offered no comment.

  Leon Gonsalez left for Devizes the next afternoon. He arrived in the town at dusk and staggered unsteadily up the rise toward the market-place. At ten o’clock that night a police constable found him leaning against a wall at the back of the Bear Hôtel, singing foolish songs, and ordered him to move away. Whereupon Leon addressed him in language for which he was at the time (since he was perfectly sober) heartily ashamed. Therefore he did appear before a bench of magistrates the next morning, charged with being drunk, using abusive language and obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.

  ‘This is hardly a case which can be met by imposing a fine,’ said the staid chairman of the Bench. ‘Here is a stranger from London who comes into this town and behaves in a most disgusting manner. Is anything known against the man?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ said the gaoler regretfully.

  ‘You will pay a fine of twenty shillings or go to prison for twenty-one days.’

  ‘I would much rather go to prison than pay,’ said Leon truthfully.

  So they committed him to the local gaol as he had expected. Twenty-one days later, looking very brown and fit, he burst into the flat and Manfred turned with outstretched hands.

  ‘I heard you were back,’ said Leon joyously. ‘I’ve had a great time! They rather upset my calculations by giving me three weeks instead of a month, and I was afraid that I’d get back before you.’

  ‘I came back yesterday,’ said George and his eyes strayed to the sideboard.

  Six large Spanish onions stood in a row and Leon Gonsalez doubled up with mirth. It was not until he had changed into more presentable garments that he told of his experience.

  ‘Bash Jones had undoubtedly homicidal plans,’ he said. ‘The most extraordinary case of facial anamorphosis I have seen. I worked with him in the tailor’s shop. He is coming out next Monday.’

  ‘He welcomed you, I presume, when he discovered you were from Deptford?’ said Manfred dryly.

  Leon nodded.

  ‘He intends to kill his wife on the third of the month, which is the day after he is released,’ he said.

  ‘Why so precise?’ asked Manfred in surprise.

  ‘Because that is the only night she sleeps in the house alone. There are usually two young men lodgers who are railwaymen and these do duty until three in the morning on the third of every month.’

  ‘Is this the truth or are you making it up?’ asked Manfred.

  ‘I did make it up,’ admitted Gonsalez. ‘But this is the story I told and he swallowed it eagerly. The young men have no key, so they come in by the kitchen door which is left unlocked. The kitchen door is reached by a narrow passage which runs the length of Little Mill Street and parallel with the houses. Oh yes, he was frightfully anxious to secure information, and he told me that he would never come back to gaol again except for a short visit. An interesting fellow. I think he had better die,’ said Leon, with some gravity. ‘Think of the possibilities for misery, George. This unfortunate girl, happy in her friends, well-bred – ’

  ‘Would you say that,’ smiled Manfred, ‘with Bash for a father?’

  ‘Well-bred, I repeat,’ said Gonsalez firmly. ‘Breeding is merely a quality acquired through life-long association with gentle-folk. Put the son of a duke in the slums and he’ll grow up a peculiar kind of slum child, but a slum child nevertheless. Think of the horror of it. Dragging this child back to the kennels of Deptford, for that will be the meaning of it, supposing this Mr Bash Jones does not kill his wife. If he kills her then the grisly truth is out. No, I think we had better settle this Mr Bash Jones.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Manfred, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar, and Leon Gonsalez sat down at the table with Browning’s poems open before him and read, pausing now and again to look thoughtfully into space as he elaborated the method by which Bash Jones should die.

  On the afternoon of the third, Mrs Amelia Jones was called away by telegram. She met Leon Gonsalez at Paddington Station.

  ‘You have brought your key with you, Mrs Jones?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the woman in surprise, then, ‘Do you know that my husband is out of prison?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Gonsalez, ‘and because he is free I want you to go away for a couple of nights. I have some friends in Plymouth. They will probably meet you at the station and if they do not meet you, you must go to this address.’

  He gave her an address of a boarding-house that he had secured from a Plymouth newspaper.

  ‘Here is some money. I insist upon your taking it. My friends are very anxious to help you.’

  She was in tears when he left her.

  ‘You are sure you have locked up your house?’ said Leon at parting.

  ‘I’ve got the key here, sir.’

  She opened her bag and he noticed that now her hands trembled all the time.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Leon taking the bag in his hand and peering at the interior in his short-sighted way. ‘Yes, there it is.’

  He put in his hand, brought it out apparently empty and closed the bag again.

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Jones,’ he said, ‘and don’t lose courage.’

  When dark fell Leon Gonsalez arrived in Little Mill Street carrying a bulky something in a black cloth bag. He entered the house unobserved, for the night was wet and gusty and Little Mill Street crouched over its scanty fires.

  He closed the door behind him and with the aid of his pocket lamp found his way to the one poor bedroom in the tiny house. He turned down the cover, humming to himself, then very carefully he removed the contents of the bag, the most important of which was a large glass globe.

  Over this he carefully arranged a black wig and searched the room for articles of clothing which might be rolled into a bundle. When he had finished his work, he stepped back and regarded it with admiration. Then he went downstairs, unlocked the kitchen door, and to make absolutely certain crossed the little yard and examined the fastening of the gate which led from the lane. The lock apparently was permanently out of order and he went back satisfied.

  In one corner of the room was a clothes hanger, screened from view by a length of cheap cretonne. He had cleared this corner of its clothing to make up the bundle on the bed. Then he sat down in a chair and waited with the pa
tience which is the peculiar attribute of the scientist.

  The church bells had struck two when he heard the back gate creak, and rising noiselessly took something from his pocket and stepped behind the cretonne curtain. It was not a house in which one could move without sound, for the floor-boards were old and creaky and every stair produced a creak. But the man who was creeping from step to step was an artist and Leon heard no other sound until the door slowly opened and a figure came in.

  It moved with stealthy steps across the room and stood for a few seconds by the side of the bulky figure in the bed. Apparently he listened and was satisfied. Then Leon saw a stick rise and fall.

  Bash Jones did not say a word until he heard the crash of the broken glass. Then he uttered an oath and Leon heard him fumble in his pocket for his matches. The delay was fatal. The chlorine gas, compressed at a pressure of many atmospheres, surged up around him. He choked, turned to run and fell, and the yellow gas rolled over him in a thick and turgid cloud.

  Leon Gonsalez stepped from his place of concealment and the dying man staring up saw two enormous glass eyes and the snout-like nozzle of the respirator and went bewildered to his death.

  Leon collected the broken glass and carefully wrapped the pieces in his bag. He replaced the clothes with the most extraordinary care and put away the wig and tidied the room before he opened the window and the door. Then he went to the front of the house and opened those windows too. A south-wester was blowing and by the morning the house would be free from gas.

  Not until he was in the back yard did he remove the gas mask he wore and place that too in the bag.

  An hour later he was in his own bed in a deep, untroubled sleep.

  Mrs Jones slept well that night, and in a dainty cubicle somewhere in the west of England a slim girlish figure in pyjamas snuggled into her pillow and sighed happily.

  But Bash Jones slept soundest of all.

  The Man who was Happy