The Law of the Four Just Men

something in Leon’s eyes stopped him.

“Birn,” said Gonsalez softly. “I am going to ruin you⁠—to take away every penny of the money you have stolen from the foolish men who patronise your establishments.”

“Try it on,” said Birn shakily. “There’s a law in this country! Go and rob the bank, and you’d have little to rob,” he added with a grin. “There’s two hundred thousand pounds’ worth of securities in my bank⁠—gilt-edged ones, Mr. Clever! Go and ask the bank manager to hand them over to you. They’re in Box 65,” he jeered. “That’s the only way you can ruin me, my son.”

Leon rose with a shrug.

“Perhaps I’m wrong,” he said. “Perhaps after all you will enjoy your ill-gotten gains.”

“You bet your life I will.” Mr. Birn relit his cigar.

He remembered the conversation that afternoon when he received an urgent telephone message from the bank. What the manager said took him there as fast as a taxi could carry him.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with your strong box,” said the bank manager, “but one of my clerks who had to go into the vault said there was an extraordinary smell, and when we looked at the box, we found a stream of smoke coming through the keyhole.”

“Why didn’t you open it?” screamed Birn, fumbling for his key.

“Partly because I haven’t a key, Mr. Birn,” said the bank manager intelligently.

With shaking hands the financier inserted the key and threw back the lid. A dense cloud of acrid yellow smoke came up and nearly stifled him⁠ ⁠… all that remained of his perfectly good securities was a black, sticky mess; a glass bottle, a few dull gems and nothing⁠ ⁠…

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“It looks to me,” said the detective officer who investigated the circumstance, “as though you must have inadvertently put in a package containing a very strong acid. What the acid is our analysts are working on now. It must have either leaked out or burst.”

“The only package there,” wailed Mr. Birn, “was a package containing a diamond necklace.”

“The remnants of which are still there,” said the detective. “You are quite sure nobody could get at that package and substitute a destroying agent? It could easily be made. A bottle such as we found⁠—a stopper made of some easily consumed material and there you are! Could anybody have opened the package and slipped the bottle inside?”

“Impossible, impossible,” moaned the financier.

He was sitting with his face in his hands, weeping for his lost affluence, for though a few of the contents of that box could be replaced, there were certain American bonds which had gone forever and promissory notes by the thousand which would never be signed again.

The Man Who Would Not Speak

But for the fact that he was already the possessor of innumerable coats-of-arms, quarterings, family mottoes direct and affiliated, Leon Gonsalez might have taken for his chief motto the tag homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto. For there was no sphere of human activity which did not fascinate him. Wherever crowds gathered, wherever man in the aggregate was to be seen at his best or worst, there was Gonsalez to be found, oblivious to the attractions which had drawn the throng together, intensely absorbed in the individual members of the throng themselves.

Many years ago four young men, wealthy and intensely sincere, had come together with a common purpose inspired by one common ideal. There had been, and always will be, such combinations of enthusiasts. Great religious revivals, the creation of missions and movements of sociological reform, these and other developments have resulted from the joining together of fiery young zealots.

But the Four Just Men had as their objective the correction of the law’s inequalities. They sought and found the men whom the wide teeth of the legal rake had left behind, and they dealt out their justice with terrible swiftness.

None of the living three (for one had died at Bordeaux) had departed from their ideals, but it was Leon who retained the appearance of that youthful enthusiasm which had brought them together.

He sought for interests in all manner of places, and it is at the back of the grandstand on Hurst Park racecourse that he first saw “Spaghetti” Jones. It is one of the clear laws of coincidence, that if, in reading a book, you come across a word which you have not seen before, and which necessitates a reference to the dictionary, that same word will occur within three days on some other printed page. This law of the Inexplicable Recurrences applies equally to people, and Leon, viewing the bulk of the big man, had a queer feeling that they were destined to meet again⁠—Leon’s instincts were seldom at fault.

Mr. Spaghetti Jones was a tall, strong and stoutly built man, heavy eyed and heavy jawed. He had a long dark moustache which curled at the ends, and he wore a green and white bow tie that the startling pink of his shirt might not be hidden from the world. There were diamond rings on his fat fingers, and a cable chain across his figured waistcoat. He was attired in a very bright blue suit, perfectly tailored, and violently yellow boots encased his feet, which were small for a man of his size. In fact, Mr. Spaghetti Jones was a model of what Mr. Spaghetti Jones thought a gentleman should be.

It was not his rich attire, nor his greatness of bulk, which ensured for him Leon’s fascinated interest. Gonsalez had strolled to the back of the stand whilst the race was in progress, and the paddock was empty. Empty save for Mr. Jones and two men, both smaller and both more poorly dressed than he.

Leon had taken a seat near the ring where the horses paraded, and it happened that the party strolled towards him. Spaghetti Jones made no attempt to lower his voice. It was rich and full of volume, and Leon heard every word. One of the men appeared to be quarrelling: the other,