“Who knows how bright are the days in store for us both?” he said softly.
Then they took him away.
XII
In Wandsworth Jail
Charles Garrett, admirable journalist, had written the last line of a humorous description of a local concert at which a cabinet minister had sung pathetic ballads. Charles wrote with difficulty, for the situation had been of itself so funny, that extracting its hidden humours was a more than ordinarily heartbreaking thing. But he had finished and the thick batch of copy lay on the chief subeditor’s desk—Charles wrote on an average six words to a folio, and a half a column story from his pen bulked like a three-volume novel.
Charles stopped to threaten an office-boy who had misdirected a letter, strolled into various quiet offices to “see who was there” and with his raincoat on his arm, and his stick in his hand, stopped at the end of his wanderings before the chattering tape machine. He looked through the glass box that shielded the mechanism, and was interested in a message from Tehran in the course of transmission.
“… at early date. Grand Vizier has informed Exchange Correspondent that the construction of line will be pushed forward …”
The tape stopped its stuttering and buzzed excitedly, then came a succession of quick jerks that cleared away the uncompleted message.
Then “… the leader of the Four Just Men was arrested in London tonight,” said the tape, and Charles broke for the editor’s room.
He flung open the door without ceremony, and repeated the story the little machine had told.
The grey chief received the news quietly, and the orders he gave in the next five minutes inconvenienced some twenty or thirty unoffending people.
The constructions of the “story” of the Four Just Men, began at the lower rung of the intellectual ladder.
“You boy! get half a dozen taxicabs here quick. … Poynter, phone the reporters in … , get the Lambs Club on the phone and see if O’Mahony or any other of our bright youths are there. … There are five columns about the Four Just Men standing in the gallery, get it pulled up, Mr. Short … pictures—h’m … yet wire Massonni to get down to the police station and see if he can find a policeman who’ll give him material for a sketch. … Off you go, Charles, and get the story.”
There was no flurry, no rush; it was for all the world like the scene on a modern battleship when “clear lower deck for action” had sounded. Two hours to get the story into the paper was ample, and there was no need for the whip.
Later, with the remorseless hands of the clock moving on, taxi after taxi flew up to the great newspaper office, discharging alert young men who literally leapt into the building. Later, with waiting operators sitting tensely before the keyboards of the linotypes, came Charles Garrett doing notable things with a stump of pencil and a ream of thin copy paper.
It was the Megaphone that shone splendidly amidst its journalistic fellows, with pages—I quote the envenomed opinion of the news editor of the Mercury—that “shouted like the checks on a bookmaker’s waistcoat.”
It was the Megaphone that fed the fires of public interest, and was mainly responsible for the huge crowds that gathered outside Greenwich Police Court, and overflowed in dense masses to the foot of Blackheath Hill, whilst Manfred underwent his preliminary inquiries.
“George Manfred, aged thirty-nine, of no occupation, residing at Hill Crest Lodge, St. John’s.” In this prosaic manner he was introduced to the world.
He made a striking figure in the steel-railed dock. A chair was placed for him, and he was guarded as few prisoners had been guarded. A special cell had been prepared for his reception, and departing from established custom, extra warders were detailed to watch him. Falmouth took no risks.
The charge that had been framed had to do with no well-known case. Many years before, one Samuel Lipski, a notorious East End sweater, had been found dead with the stereotyped announcement that he had fallen to the justice of the Four. Upon this the Treasury founded its case for the prosecution—a case which had been very thoroughly and convincingly prepared, and pigeonholed against such time as arrest should overtake one or the other of the Four Just Men.
Reading over the thousands of newspaper cuttings dealing with the preliminary examination and trial of Manfred, I am struck with the absence of any startling feature, such as one might expect to find in a great state trial of this description. Summarizing the evidence that was given at the police court, one might arrange the “parts” of the dozen or so commonplace witnesses so that they read:
A policeman: “I found the body.”
An inspector: “I read the label.”
A doctor: “I pronounced him dead.”
An only man with a slight squint and broken English: “This man Lipski, I known him, he were a goot man and make the business wit the head, ker-vick.”
And the like.
Manfred refused to plead “guilty” or “not guilty.” He spoke only once during the police court proceedings, and then only when the formal question had been put to him.
“I am prepared to abide by the result of my trial,” he said clearly, “and it cannot matter much one way or the other whether I plead ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty.’ ”
“I will enter your plea as ‘not guilty,’ ” said the magistrate.
Manfred bowed.
“That is at your worship’s discretion,” he said.
On the seventh of June he was formally committed for trial. He had a short interview with Falmouth before he was removed from the police-court cells.
Falmouth would have found it difficult to analyse his feelings towards this man. He scarcely knew himself whether he was glad or sorry that fate had thrown the redoubtable leader into his hands.
His attitude to Manfred was that of a subordinate to a superior, and that attitude he would have found hardest to explain.
When the cell door was opened to admit the detective, Manfred was reading. He rose with a cheery smile to greet his
