Those who knew the Red Hundred best were heartily in accord with his philosophy.
“They caught Jessen,” reported Falmouth.
“Oh!” said the Commissioner.
“When he disclosed his identity, they got rid of him quick.”
“I’ve often wondered why the Four Just Men didn’t do the business of Starque themselves,” mused the Commissioner.
“It was rather rum,” admitted Falmouth, “but Starque was a man under sentence, as also was François. By some means they got hold of the original warrants, and it was on these that Jessen—did what he did.”
The commissioner nodded.
“And now,” he asked, “what about them?”
Falmouth had expected this question sooner or later.
“Do you suggest that we should catch them, sir?” he asked with thinly veiled sarcasm; “because if you do, sir, I have only to remind you that we’ve been trying to do that for some years.”
The chief commissioner frowned.
“It’s a remarkable thing,” he said, “that as soon as we get a situation such as—the Red Hundred scare and the Four Just Men scare, for instance, we’re completely at sea, and that’s what the papers will say. It doesn’t sound creditable, but it’s so.”
I place the superintendent’s defence of Scotland Yard on record in extenso.
“What the papers say,” said Falmouth, “never keeps me awake at night. Nobody’s quite got the hang of the police force in this country—certainly the writing people haven’t.
“There are two ways of writing about the police, sir. One way is to deal with them in the newspaper fashion with the headline ‘Another Police Blunder’ or ‘The Police and The Public,’ and the other way is to deal with them in the magazine style, which is to show them as softies on the wrong scent, whilst an ornamental civilian is showing them their business, or as mysterious people with false beards who pop up at the psychological moment, and say, in a loud voice, ‘In the name of the Law, I arrest you!’
“Well, I don’t mind admitting that I know neither kind. I’ve been a police officer for twenty-three years, and the only assistance I’ve had from a civilian was from a man named Blackie, who helped me to find the body of a woman that had disappeared. I was rather prejudiced against him, but I don’t mind admitting that he was pretty smart and followed his clues with remarkable ingenuity.
“The day we found the body I said to him:
“ ‘Mr. Blackie, you have given me a great deal of information about this woman’s movements—in fact, you know a great deal more than you ought to know—so I shall take you into custody on the suspicion of having caused her death.’
“Before he died he made a full confession, and ever since then I have always been pleased to take as much advice and help from outside as I could get.
“When people sometimes ask me about the cleverness of Scotland Yard, I can’t tell ’em tales such as you read about. I’ve had murderers, anarchists, burglars, and average low-down people to deal with, but they have mostly done their work in a commonplace way and bolted. And as soon as they have bolted, we’ve employed fairly commonplace methods and brought ’em back.
“If you ask me whether I’ve been in dreadful danger, when arresting desperate murderers and criminals, I say ‘No.’
“When your average criminal finds himself cornered, he says, ‘All right, Mr. Falmouth; it’s a cop,’ and goes quietly.
“Crime and criminals run in grooves. They’re hardy annuals with perennial methods. Extraordinary circumstances baffle the police as they baffle other folks. You can’t run a business on business lines and be absolutely prepared for anything that turns up. Whiteley’s will supply you with a flea or an elephant, but if a woman asked a shopgirl to hold her baby whilst she went into the tinned meat department, the girl and the manager and the whole system would be floored, because there is no provision for holding babies. And if a Manchester goods merchant, unrolling his stuff, came upon a snake lying all snug in the bale, he’d be floored too, because natural history isn’t part of their business training, and they wouldn’t be quite sure whether it was a big worm or a boa constrictor.”
The Commissioner was amused.
“You’ve an altogether unexpected sense of humor,” he said, “and the moral is—”
“That the unexpected always floors you, whether it’s humour or crime,” said Falmouth, and went away fairly pleased with himself.
In his room he found a waiting messenger.
“A lady to see you, sir.”
“Who is it?” he asked in surprise.
The messenger handed him a slip of paper and when he read it whistled.
“The unexpected, by—! Show her up.”
On the paper was written—“The Woman of Gratz.”
XI
Manfred
Manfred sat alone in his Lewisham house—he was known to the old lady who was his caretaker as “a foreign gentleman in the music line”—and in the subdued light of the shaded lamp, he looked tired. A book lay on the table near at hand, and a silver coffee-service and an empty coffee-cup stood on the stool by his side. Reaction he felt. This strange man had set himself to a task that was never ending. The destruction of the forces of the Red Hundred was the end of a fight that cleared the ground for the commencement of another—but physically he was weary.
Gonsalez had left that morning for Paris, Poiccart went by the afternoon train, and he was to join them tomorrow.
The strain of the fight had told on them, all three. Financially, the cost of the war had been heavy, but that strain they could stand better than any other, for had they not the fortune of—Courlander; in case of need they knew their man.
All the world had been searched before they—the first Four—had come together—Manfred, Gonsalez, Poiccart, and the man who slept eternally in the flower-grown grave at Bordeaux. As men taking the oaths of priesthood they lived down the passions and frets of life. Each man was an
