He sat up suddenly and leant over, dropping his hand on Poiccart’s arm.
“When we were talking of—our plan the other day you spoke of our greatest danger, the one thing we could not avoid. Does it not seem to you that the ‘Rational Faithers’ offer a solution with their querulous campaigns, their demonstrations, their brassy brass band, and their preposterous chants?”
Poiccart pulled steadily at his pipe.
“You’re a wonderful man, Leon,” he said.
Leon walked over to the cupboard, unlocked it, and drew out a big portfolio such as artists use to carry their drawings in. He untied the strings and turned over the loose pages. It was a collection that had cost the Four Just Men much time and a great deal of money.
“What are you going to do?” asked Poiccart, as the other, slipping off his coat and fixing his pince-nez, sat down before a big plan he had extracted from the portfolio. Leon took up a fine drawing-pen from the table, examined the nib with the eye of a skilled craftsman, and carefully uncorked a bottle of architect’s ink.
“Have you ever felt a desire to draw imaginary islands?” he asked, “naming your own bays, christening your capes, creating towns with a scratch of your pen, and raising up great mountains with herringbone strokes? Because I’m going to do something like that—I feel in that mood which in little boys is eloquently described as ‘trying,’ and I have the inclination to annoy Scotland Yard.”
It was the day before the trial that Falmouth made the discovery. To be exact it was made for him. The keeper of a Gower Street boarding house reported that two mysterious men had engaged rooms. They came late at night with one portmanteau bearing divers foreign labels; they studiously kept their faces in the shadow, and the beard of one was obviously false. In addition to which they paid for their lodgings in advance, and that was the most damning circumstance of all. Imagine mine host, showing them to their rooms, palpitating with his tremendous suspicion, calling to the full upon his powers of simulation, ostentatiously nonchalant, and impatient to convey the news to the police-station round the corner. For one called the other Leon, and they spoke despairingly in stage whispers of “poor Manfred.”
They went out together, saying they would return soon after midnight, ordering a fire for their bedroom, for the night was wet and chilly.
Half an hour later the full story was being told to Falmouth over the telephone.
“It’s too good to be true,” was his comment, but gave orders. The hotel was well surrounded by midnight, but so skilfully that the casual passerby would never have suspected it. At three in the morning, Falmouth decided that the men had been warned, and broke open their doors to search the rooms. The portmanteau was their sole find. A few articles of clothing, bearing the “tab” of a Parisian tailor, was all they found till Falmouth, examining the bottom of the portmanteau, found that it was false.
“Hullo!” he said, and in the light of his discovery the exclamation was modest in its strength, for, neatly folded, and cunningly hidden, he came upon the plans. He gave them a rapid survey and whistled. Then he folded them up and put them carefully in his pocket.
“Keep the house under observation,” he ordered. “I don’t expect they’ll return, but if they do, take ’em.”
Then he flew through the deserted streets as fast as a motorcar could carry him, and woke the chief commissioner from a sound sleep.
“What is it?” he asked as he led the detective to his study.
Falmouth showed him the plans.
The Commissioner raised his eyebrows, and whistled.
“That’s what I said,” confessed Falmouth.
The chief spread the plans upon the big table.
“Wandsworth, Pentonville and Reading,” said the Commissioner. “Plans, and remarkably good plans, of all three prisons.”
Falmouth indicated the writing in the cramped hand and the carefully ruled lines that had been drawn in red ink.
“Yes, I see them,” said the Commissioner, “and read ‘Wall three feet thick—dynamite here, warder on duty here—can be shot from wall, distance to entrance to prison hall twenty-five feet; condemned cell here, walls three feet, one window, barred ten feet three inches from ground.’ ”
“They’ve got the thing down very fine—what is this—Wandsworth?”
“It’s the same with the others, sir,” said Falmouth. “They’ve got distances, heights and posts worked out; they must have taken years to get this information.”
“One thing is evident,” said the Commissioner; “they’ll do nothing until after the trial—all these plans have been drawn with the condemned cell as the point of objective.”
Next morning Manfred received a visit from Falmouth.
“I hate to tell you, Mr. Manfred,” he said, “that we have in our possession full details of your contemplated rescue.”
Manfred looked puzzled.
“Last night your two friends escaped by the skin of their teeth, leaving behind them elaborate plans—”
“In writing?” asked Manfred, with his quick smile.
“In writing,” said Falmouth solemnly. “I think it is my duty to tell you this, because it seems that you are building too much upon what is practically an impossibility, an escape from gaol.”
“Yes,” answered Manfred absently, “perhaps so—in writing I think you said.”
“Yes, the whole thing was worked out”—he thought he had said quite enough, and turned the subject. “Don’t you think you ought to change your mind and retain a lawyer?”
“I think you’re right,” said Manfred slowly. “Will you arrange for a member of some respectable firm of solicitors to see me?”
“Certainly,” said Falmouth, “though you’ve left your defence—”
“Oh, it isn’t my defence,” said Manfred cheerfully; “only I think I ought to make a will.”
XIV
At the Old Bailey
They were privileged people who gained admission to the Old Bailey, people with tickets from sheriffs, reporters, great actors, and very successful authors. The early editions of the evening newspapers announced the arrival of these latter
