The Law of the Four Just Men

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 weekend. 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