François stood waiting, the rest of the men had disappeared.
“The papers! the papers!” cried the Frenchman.
“Gone!” replied Bartholomew between his teeth.
Less than a hundred yards away another conference was being held.
“Manfred,” said Poiccart suddenly—there had been a lull in the talk—“shall we need our friend?”
Manfred smiled.
“Meaning the admirable Mr. Jessen?”
Poiccart nodded.
“I think so,” said Manfred quietly; “I am not so sure that the cheap alarm-clock we put in the biscuit box will be a sufficient warning to the Inner Council—here is Leon.”
Gonsalez walked into the room and removed his overcoat deliberately.
Then they saw that the sleeve of his dress coat was torn, and Manfred remarked the stained handkerchief that was lightly bound round one hand.
“Glass,” explained Gonsalez laconically. “I had to scale a wall.”
“Well?” asked Manfred.
“Very well,” replied the other; “they bolted like sheep, and I had nothing to do but to walk in and carry away the extremely interesting record of sentences they have passed.”
“What of Bartholomew?”
Gonsalez was mildly amused.
“He was less panicky than the rest—he came back to look for the papers.”
“Will he—?”
“I think so,” said Leon. “I noticed he left the black bean behind him in his flight—so I presume we shall see the red.”
“It will simplify matters,” said Manfred gravely.
V
The Council of Justice
Lauder Bartholomew knew a man who was farming in Uganda. It was not remarkable that he should suddenly remember his friend’s existence and call to mind a three years’ old invitation to spend a winter in that part of Africa. Bartholomew had a club. It was euphemistically styled in all the best directories as “Social, Literary and Dramatic,” but knowing men about town called it by a shorter title. To them it was a “night club.” Poorly as were the literary members catered for, there were certain weeklies, the Times, and a collection of complimentary time tables to be obtained for the asking, and Bartholomew sought and found particulars of sailings. He might leave London on the next morning and overtake (via Brindisi and Suez) the German boat that would land him in Uganda in a couple of weeks.
On the whole he thought this course would be wise.
To tell the truth, the Red Hundred was becoming too much of a serious business; he had a feeling that he was suspect, and was more certain that the end of his unlimited financing was in sight. That much he had long since recognized, and had made his plans accordingly. As to the Four Just Men, they would come in with Menshikoff; it would mean only a duplication of treachery. Turning the pages of a Bradshaw, he mentally reviewed his position. He had in hand some seven hundred pounds, and his liabilities were of no account because the necessity for discharging them never occurred to him. Seven hundred pounds—and the red bean, and Menshikoff.
“If they mean business,” he said to himself, “I can count on three thousand.”
The obvious difficulty was to get into touch with the Four. Time was everything and one could not put an advertisement in the paper: “If the Four Just Men will communicate with L⸺ B⸺ they will hear of something to their advantage.”
Nor was it expedient to make in the agony columns of the London press even the most guarded reference to Red Beans after what had occurred at the Council Meeting. The matter of the Embassy was simple. Under his breath he cursed the Four Just Men for their unbusinesslike communication. If only they had mentioned or hinted at some rendezvous the thing might have been arranged.
A man in evening dress asked him if he had finished with the Bradshaw. He resigned it ungraciously, and calling a club waiter, ordered a whisky and soda and flung himself into a chair to think out a solution.
The man returned the Bradshaw with a polite apology.
“So sorry to have interrupted, but I’ve been called abroad at a moment’s notice,” he said.
Bartholomew looked up resentfully. This young man’s face seemed familiar.
“Haven’t I met you somewhere?” he asked.
The stranger shrugged his shoulders.
“One is always meeting and forgetting,” he smiled. “I thought I knew you, but I cannot quite place you.”
Not only the face but the voice was strangely familiar.
“Not English,” was Bartholomew’s mental analysis, “possibly French, more likely Slav—who the dickens can it be?”
In a way he was glad of the diversion, and found himself engaged in a pleasant discussion on fly fishing.
As the hands of the clock pointed to midnight, the stranger yawned and got up from his chair.
“Going west?” he asked pleasantly.
Bartholomew had no definite plans for spending the next hour, so he assented and the two men left the club together. They strolled across Piccadilly Circus and into Piccadilly, chatting pleasantly.
Through Half Moon Street into Berkeley Square, deserted and silent, the two men sauntered, then the stranger stopped.
“I’m afraid I’ve taken you out of your way,” he said.
“Not a bit,” replied Bartholomew, and was conventionally amiable.
Then they parted, and the ex-captain walked back by the way he had come, picking up again the threads of the problem that had filled his mind in the earlier part of the evening.
Halfway down Half Moon Street was a motorcar, and as he came abreast, a man who stood by the curb—and whom he had mistaken for a waiting chauffeur—barred his further progress.
“Captain Bartholomew?” he asked respectfully.
“That is my name,” said the other in surprise.
“My master wishes to know whether you have decided.”
“What—?”
“If,” went on his imperturbable examiner, “if you have decided on the red—here is the car, if you will be pleased to enter.”
“And if I have decided on the black?” he asked with a little hesitation.
“Under the circumstances,” said the man without emotion, “my master is of opinion that for his greater safety, he must take steps to ensure your neutrality.”
There was no menace in the tone, but an icy matter-of-fact confidence that shocked this hardened adventurer.
In the
