The detective gasped.
“Then who in the name of Fate is this?”
It was M. Menshikoff, who had come in with the commissioner, who answered.
“Antonio Selleni, an anarchist of Milan,” he reported.
Carlos Ferdinand Bourbon, Prince of the Escorial, Duke of Buda-Gratz, and heir to three thrones, was married, and his many august cousins scattered throughout Europe had a sense of heartfelt relief.
A prince with admittedly advanced views, an idealist, with Utopian schemes for the regeneration of mankind, and, coming down to the mundane practical side of life, a reckless motorcar driver, an outrageously daring horseman, and possessed of the indifference to public opinion which is equally the equipment of your fool and your truly great man, his marriage had been looked forward to throughout the courts of Europe in the light of an international achievement.
Said his Imperial Majesty of Central Europe to the grizzled chancellor:
“ ‘Te Deums’—you understand, von Hedlitz? In every church.”
“It is a great relief,” said the chancellor, wagging his head thoughtfully.
“Relief!” the Emperor stretched himself as though the relief were physical, “that young man owes me two years of life. You heard of the London essay?”
The chancellor had heard—indeed, he had heard three or four times—but he was a polite chancellor and listened attentively. His Majesty had the true story-telling faculty, and elaborated the introduction.
“… if I am to believe his Highness, he was sitting quietly in his box when the Italian entered. He saw the knife in his hand and half rose to grapple with the intruder. Suddenly, from nowhere in particular, sprang three men, who had the assassin on the floor bound and gagged. You would have thought our Carlos Ferdinand would have made an outcry! But not he! He sat stock still, dividing his attention between the stage and the prostrate man and the leader of this mysterious band of rescuers.”
“The Four Just Men!” put in the chancellor.
“Three, so far as I can gather,” corrected the imperial storyteller. “Well, it would appear that this leader, in quite a logical calm, matter-of-fact way, suggested that the prince should leave quietly; that his motorcar was at the stage door, that a saloon had been reserved at Charing Cross, a cabin at Dover, and a special train at Calais.”
His Majesty had a trick of rubbing his knee when anything amused him, and this he did now.
“Carl obeyed like a child—which seems the remarkably strange point about the whole proceedings—the captured anarchist was trussed and bound and sat on the chair, and left to his own unpleasant thoughts.”
“And killed,” said the chancellor.
“No, not killed,” corrected the Emperor. “Part of the story I tell you is his—he told it to the police at the hospital—no, no, not killed—his friend was not the marksman he thought.”
IX
The Four vs. the Hundred
Some workmen, returning home of an evening and taking a shortcut through a field two miles from Catford, saw a man hanging from a tree.
They ran across and found a fashionably dressed gentleman of foreign appearance. One of the labourers cut the rope with his knife, but the man was dead when they cut him down. Beneath the tree was a black bag, to which somebody had affixed a label bearing the warning, “Do not touch—this bag contains explosives: inform the police.” More remarkable still was the luggage label tied to the lapel of the dead man’s coat. It ran: “This is Franz Kitsinger, convicted at Prague in 1904, for throwing a bomb: escaped from prison March 17, 1905: was one of the three men responsible for the attempt on the Tower Bridge today. Executed by order of The Council of Justice.”
“It’s a humiliating confession,” said the chief commissioner when they brought the news to him, “but the presence of these men takes a load off my mind.”
But the Red Hundred were grimly persistent.
That night a man, smoking a cigar, strolled aimlessly past the policeman on point duty at the corner of Kensington Park Gardens, and walked casually into Ladbroke Square. He strolled on, turned a corner and crossing a road, till he came to where one great garden served for a double row of middle-class houses. The backs of these houses opened on to the square. He looked round and, seeing the coast clear, he clambered over the iron railings and dropped into the big pleasure ground, holding very carefully an object that bulged in his pocket.
He took a leisurely view of the houses before he decided on the victim. The blinds of this particular house were up and the French windows of the dining-room were open, and he could see the laughing group of young people about the table. There was a birthday party or something of the sort in progress, for there was a great parade of Parthian caps and paper sunbonnets.
The man was evidently satisfied with the possibilities for tragedy, and he took a pace nearer. …
Two strong arms were about him, arms with muscles like cords of steel.
“Not that way, my friend,” whispered a voice in his ear. …
The man showed his teeth in a dreadful grin.
The sergeant on duty at Notting Hill Gate Station received a note at the hands of a grimy urchin, who for days afterwards maintained a position of enviable notoriety.
“A gentleman told me to bring this,” he said.
The sergeant looked at the small boy sternly and asked him if he ever washed his face. Then he read the letter:
“The second man of the three concerned in the attempt to blow up the Tower Bridge will be found in the garden of Maidham Crescent, under the laurel bushes, opposite No. 72.”
It was signed “The Council of Justice.”
The commissioner was sitting over his coffee at the Ritz, when they brought him the news. Falmouth was a deferential guest, and the chief passed him the note without comment.
“This is going to settle the Red Hundred,” said Falmouth. “These people are fighting them with their own weapons—assassination with assassination, terror with terror. Where do
