In an instant the place was a pandemonium.
“Silence!” Falmouth roared above the din; “silence! Keep quiet, you miserable cowards—show a light here, Brown, Curtis—Inspector, where are your men’s lanterns!”
The rays of a dozen bull’s-eye lamps waved over the struggling throng.
“Open your lanterns”—and to the seething mob, “Silence!”
Then a bright young officer remembered that he had seen gas-brackets in the room, and struggled through the howling mob till he came to the wall and found the gas-fitting with his lantern. He struck a match and lit the gas, and the panic subsided as suddenly as it had begun.
Falmouth, choked with rage, threw his eye round the hall.
“Guard the door,” he said briefly; “the hall is surrounded and they cannot possibly escape.” He strode swiftly along the central aisle, followed by two of his men, and with an agile leap, sprang on to the platform and faced the audience. The Woman of Gratz, with a white set face, stood motionless, one hand resting on the little table, the other at her throat. Falmouth raised his hand to enjoin silence and the lawbreakers obeyed.
“I have no quarrel with the Red Hundred,” he said. “By the law of this country it is permissible to hold opinions and propagate doctrines, however objectionable they be—I am here to arrest two men who have broken the laws of this country. Two persons who are part of the organization known as the Four Just Men.”
All the time he was speaking his eyes searched the faces before him. He knew that one-half of the audience could not understand him and that the hum of talk that arose as he finished was his speech in course of translation.
The faces he sought he could not discern. To be exact, he hoped that his scrutiny would induce two men, of whose identity he was ignorant, to betray themselves.
There are little events, unimportant in themselves, which occasionally lead to tremendous issues. A skidding motorbus that crashed into a private car in Piccadilly had led to the discovery that there were three vociferous foreign gentlemen imprisoned in the overturned vehicle. It led to the further discovery that the chauffeur had disappeared in the confusion of the collision. In the darkness, comparing notes, the three prisoners had arrived at a conclusion—to wit, that their abduction was a sequel to a mysterious letter each had received, which bore the signature “The Four Just Men.”
So in the panic occasioned by the accident, they were sufficiently indiscreet to curse the Four Just Men by name, and, the Four Just Men being a sore topic with the police, they were questioned further, and the end of it was that Superintendent Falmouth motored eastward in great haste and was met in Middlesex Street by a reserve of police specially summoned.
He was at the same disadvantage he had always been—the Four Just Men were to him names only, symbols of a swift remorseless force that struck surely and to the minute—and nothing more.
Two or three of the leaders of the Red Hundred had singled themselves out and drew closer to the platform.
“We are not aware,” said François, the Frenchman, speaking for his companions in faultless English, “we are not aware of the identity of the men you seek, but on the understanding that they are not brethren of our Society, and moreover”—he was at a loss for words to put the fantastic situation—“and moreover since they have threatened us—threatened us,” he repeated in bewilderment, “we will afford you every assistance.”
The detective jumped at the opportunity.
“Good!” he said and formed a rapid plan.
The two men could not have escaped from the hall. There was a little door near the platform, he had seen that—as the two men he sought had seen it. Escape seemed possible through there; they had thought so, too. But Falmouth knew that the outer door leading from the little vestibule was guarded by two policemen. This was the sum of the discovery made also by the two men he sought. He spoke rapidly to François.
“I want every person in the hall to be vouched for,” he said quickly. “Somebody must identify every man, and the identifier must himself be identified.”
The arrangements were made with lightning-like rapidity. From the platform in French, German and Yiddish, the leaders of the Red Hundred explained the plan. Then the police formed a line, and one by one the people came forward, and shyly, suspiciously or self-consciously, according to their several natures, they passed the police line.
“That is Simon Czech of Budapest.”
“Who identifies him?”
“I,”—a dozen voices.
“Pass.”
“This is Michael Ranekov of Odessa.”
“Who identifies him?”
“I,” said a burly man, speaking in German.
“And you?”
There was a little titter, for Michael is the best-known man in the Order. Some there were who, having passed the line, waited to identify their kinsfolk and fellow-countrymen.
“It seems much simpler than I could have imagined.”
It was the tall man with the trim beard, who spoke in a guttural tone which was neither German nor Yiddish. He was watching with amused interest the examination.
“Separating the lambs from the goats with a vengeance,” he said with a faint smile, and his taciturn companion nodded. Then he asked—
“Do you think any of these people will recognize you as the man who fired?”
The tall man shook his head decisively.
“Their eyes were on the police—and besides I am too quick a shot. Nobody saw me unless—”
“The Woman of Gratz?” asked the other, without showing the slightest concern.
“The Woman of Gratz,” said George Manfred.
They formed part of a struggling line that moved slowly toward the police barrier.
“I fear,” said Manfred, “that we shall be forced to make our escape in a perfectly obvious way—the bull-at-the-gate method is one that I object to on principle, and it is one that I have never been obliged to employ.”
They were speaking all the time in the language of the harsh gutturals, and those who were in their vicinity looked at them in some perplexity, for it is a tongue unlike any that is
