The Law of the Four Just Men

you ran an opium den. A good many of your clients gave us a visit. They had to go through with it, and so must you.”

He waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands and then the door opened and a man came in. He was a slight man with a red beard and a mop of red hair.

The warder swung the prisoner round.

“Put your hands behind you,” he said and Ballam sweated as he felt the strap grip his wrists.

Then light was extinguished. A cap was drawn over his face and he thought he heard voices behind him. He wasn’t fit to die, he knew that. There always was a parson in a case like this. Someone grasped his arm on either side and he walked slowly forward through the door across a yard and through another door. It was a long way and once his knees gave under him but he stood erect. Presently they stopped.

“Stand where you are,” said a voice and he found a noose slipped round his neck and waited, waited in agony, minutes, hours it seemed. He took no account of time and could not judge it. Then he heard a heavy step and somebody caught him by the arm.

“What are you doing here, governor?” said a voice.

The bag was pulled from his head. He was in the street. It was night and he stood under the light of a street-lamp. The man regarding him curiously was a policeman.

“Got a bit of rope round your neck, too, somebody tied your hands. What is it⁠—a holdup case?” said the policeman as he loosened the straps. “Or is it a lark?” demanded the representative of the law. “I’m surprised at you, an old gentleman like you with white hair!”

Gregory Ballam’s hair had been black less than seven hours before when Leon Gonsalez had drugged his coffee and had brought him through the basement exit into the big yard at the back of the club.

For here was a nice new garage as Leon had discovered when he prospected the place, and here they were left uninterrupted to play the comedy of the condemned cell with blue sheets of prison notepaper put there for the occasion and a copy of Prison Regulations which was donated quite unwittingly by Mr. Fare, Commissioner of Police.

The Man Who Hated Amelia Jones

There was a letter that came to Leon Gonsalez, and the stamp bore the image and superscription of Alphonse XIII. It was from a placid man who had written his letter in the hour of siesta, when Cordova slept, and he had scribbled all the things which had come into his head as he sat in an orange bower overlooking the lordly Guadalquivir, now in yellow spate.

“It is from Poiccart,” said Leon.

“Yes?” replied George Manfred, half asleep in a big armchair before the fire.

That and a green-shaded reading lamp supplied the illumination to their comfortable Jermyn Street flat at the moment.

“And what,” said George, stretching himself, “what does our excellent friend Poiccart have to say?”

“A blight has come upon his onions,” said Leon solemnly and Manfred chuckled and then was suddenly grave.

There was a time when the name of these three, with one who now lay in the Bordeaux cemetery, had stricken terror to the hearts of evildoers. In those days the Four Just Men were a menace to the sleep of many cunning men who had evaded the law, yet had not evaded this ubiquitous organisation, which slew ruthlessly in the name of Justice.

Poiccart was growing onions! He sighed and repeated the words aloud.

“And why not?” demanded Leon. “Have you read of the Three Musketeers?”

“Surely,” said Manfred, with a smile at the fire.

“In what book, may I ask?” demanded Leon.

“Why, in The Three Musketeers, of course,” replied Manfred in surprise.

“Then you did wrong,” said Leon Gonsalez promptly. “To love the Three Musketeers, you must read of them in The Iron Mask. When one of them has grown fat and is devoting himself to his raiment, and one is a mere courtier of the King of France, and the other is old and full of sorrow for his lovesick child. Then they become human, my dear Manfred, just as Poiccart becomes human when he grows onions. Shall I read you bits?”

“Please,” said Manfred, properly abashed.

“H’m,” read Gonsalez, “ ‘I told you about the onions, George. I have some gorgeous roses. Manfred would love them⁠ ⁠… do not take too much heed of this new blood test, by which the American doctor professes that he can detect degrees of relationship⁠ ⁠… the new little pigs are doing exceedingly well. There is one that is exceptionally intelligent and contemplative. I have named him George.’ ”

George Manfred by the fire squirmed in his chair and chuckled.

“ ‘This will be a very good year for wine, I am told,’ ” Leon read on, “ ‘but the oranges are not as plentiful as they were last year⁠ ⁠… do you know that the fingerprints of twins are identical? Curiously enough the fingerprints of twins of the anthropoid ape are dissimilar. I wish you would get information on this subject⁠ ⁠…’ ”

He read on, little scraps of domestic news, fleeting excursions into scientific side-issues, tiny scraps of gossip⁠—they filled ten closely written pages.

Leon folded the letter and put it in his pocket.

“Of course he’s not right about the fingerprints of twins being identical. That was one of the illusions of the excellent Lombroso. Anyway the fingerprint system is unsatisfactory.”

“I never heard it called into question,” said George in surprise. “Why isn’t it satisfactory?”

Leon rolled a cigarette with deft fingers, licked down the paper and lit the ragged end before he replied.

“At Scotland Yard, they have, let us say, one hundred thousand fingerprints. In Britain there are fifty million inhabitants. One hundred thousand is exactly one five-hundredth of fifty millions. Suppose you were a police officer and you were called to the Albert Hall where five hundred people were assembled and told