The Council of Justice by Edgar Wallace (best new books to read TXT) 📖

and I had to lie to her—we cannot afford the risk

of betrayal. Like the remainder of the Red Hundred, she clings to the

idea that we have thousands of people in our organization; she accepted

my story of storming the prison with sheer brute force. She wanted to

stay, but I told her that she would spoil everything—she leaves for

the continent tomorrow.’

 

‘She has no money, of course,’ said Poiccart with a yawn.

 

‘None—the Red Hundred has stopped supplies—but I gave her—’

 

‘Naturally,’ said Poiccart.

 

‘It was difficult to persuade her to take it; she was like a mad

thing between her fear of George, her joy at the news I gave her—and

remorse.

 

‘I think,’ he went on seriously, ‘that she had an affection for

George.’

 

Poiccart looked at him.

 

‘You surprise me,’ he said ironically, and went to bed.

 

Day found them working. There was machinery to be dismantled, a

heavy open door to be fixed, new tires to be fitted to the big car. An

hour before the midday demonstration came a knock at the outer door.

Leon answered it and found a polite chauffeur. In the roadway stood a

car with a solitary occupant.

 

The chauffeur wanted petrol; he had run himself dry. His master

descended from the car and came forward to conduct the simple

negotiation. He dismissed the mechanic with a word.

 

‘There are one or two questions I would like to ask about my car,’

ne said distinctly.

 

‘Come inside, sir,’ said Leon, and ushered the man into the

sitting-room.

 

He closed the door and turned on the fur-clad visitor.

 

‘Why did you come?’ he asked quickly; ‘it is terribly dangerous—

for you.’

 

‘I know,’ said the other easily, ‘but I thought there might be

something I could do—what is the plan?’

 

In a few words Leon told him, and the young man shivered.

 

‘A gruesome experience for George,’ he said.

 

‘It’s the only way,’ replied Leon, ‘and George has nerves like

ice.’

 

‘And after—you’re leaving that to chance?’

 

‘You mean where shall we make for—the sea, of course. There is a

good road between here and Clacton, and the boat lies snug between

there and Walton.’

 

‘I see,’ said the young man, and he made a suggestion.

 

‘Excellent—but you?’ said Leon.

 

‘I shall be all right?’ said the cheerful visitor.

 

‘By the way, have you a telegraph map of this part of the

world?’

 

Leon unlocked a drawer and took out a folded paper.

 

‘If you would arrange that,’ he said, ‘I should be grateful.’

 

The man who called himself Courtlander marked the plan with a

pencil.

 

‘I have men who may be trusted to the very end,’ he said. ‘The wires

shall be cut at eight o’clock, and Chelmsford shall be isolated from

the world.’

 

Then, with a tin of petrol in his hand, he walked back to his

car.

 

CHAPTER XVI. The Execution

 

If you pass through the little door that leads to the porter’s lodge

(the door will be locked and bolted behind you) your conductor will

pass you through yet another door into a yard that is guarded by the

ponderous doors of the prison at the one end and by a big steel gate at

the other. Through this gate you reach another courtyard, and bearing

to the right, you come to a flight of stone steps that bring you to the

governor’s tiny office. If you go straight along the narrow passage

from which the office opens, descend a flight of stairs at the other

end, through a well-guarded doorway, you come suddenly into the great

hall of the prison. Here galleries run along both sides of the hall,

and steel gangways and bridges span the width at intervals. Here, too,

polished stairways criss-cross, and the white face of the two long

walls of the hall are pitted with little black doors.

 

On the ground floor, the first cell on the right as you enter the

hall from the governor’s office is larger and more commodious than its

fellows. There is, too, a suspicion of comfort in the strip of matting

that covers the floor, in the naked gaslight which flares in its wire

cage by day and night, in the table and chair, and the plain

comfortable bed. This is the condemned cell. A dozen paces from its

threshold is a door that leads to another part of the yard, and a dozen

more paces along the flagged pathway brings you to a little

unpretentious one-storeyed house without windows, and a doorway

sufficiently wide to allow two men to pass abreast. There is a beam

where a rope may be made fast, and a trapdoor, and a brick-lined pit,

coloured with a salmon-pink distemper.

 

From his cell, Manfred was an interested listener, as day by day the

uproar of the demonstration before the gates increased.

 

He found in the doctor who visited him daily a gentleman of some

wit. In a sense, he replaced the governor of Wandsworth as an

intellectual companion, for the master of Chelmsford was a reserved

man, impregnated with the traditions of the system. To the doctor,

Manfred confided his private opinion of the ‘Rational Faithers’.

 

‘But why on earth have you left them so much money?’ asked the

surprised medico.

 

‘Because I dislike cranks and narrow, foolish people most

intensely,’ was the cryptic reply.

 

‘This Sweeney—’ he went on.

 

‘How did you hear of Sweeney?’ asked the doctor.

 

‘Oh, one hears,’ said Manfred carelessly. ‘Sweeney had an

international reputation; besides,’ he added, not moving a muscle of

his face, ‘I know about everybody.’

 

‘Me, for instance?’ challenged the man of medicine.

 

‘You,’ repeated Manfred wisely. ‘From the day you left Clifton to

the day you married the youngest Miss Arbuckle of Chertsey.’

 

‘Good Lord!’ gasped the doctor.

 

‘It isn’t surprising, is it,’ explained Manfred, ‘that for quite a

long time I have taken an interest in the various staffs of the prisons

within Teach of London?’

 

‘I suppose it isn’t,’ said the other. None the less he was

impressed.

 

Manfred’s life in Chelmsford differed in a very little degree from

his life in Wandsworth.

 

The routine of prison life remained the same: the daily exercises,

the punctilious visits of governor, doctor and chaplain.

 

On one point Manfred was firm. He would receive no spiritual

ministrations, he would attend no service. He made his position clear

to the scandalized chaplain.

 

‘You do not know to what sect I am attached,’ he said, ‘because I

have refused to give any information upon that point. I feel sure you

have no desire to proselytize or convert me from my established

beliefs.’

 

‘What are your beliefs?’ asked the chaplain.

 

‘That,’ said Manfred, ‘is my own most secret knowledge, and which I

do not intend sharing with any man.’

 

‘But you cannot die like a heathen,’ said the clergyman in

horror.

 

‘Point of view is everything,’ was the calm rejoinder, ‘and I am

perfectly satisfied with the wholesomeness of my own; in addition to

which,’ he added, ‘I am not going to die just yet, and being aware of

this, I shrink from accepting from good men the sympathy and thought

which I do not deserve.’

 

To the doctor he was a constant source of wonder, letting fall

surprising items of news mysteriously acquired.

 

‘Where he gets his information from, puzzles me, sir,’ he confessed

to the governor. ‘The men who are guarding him—’

 

‘Are above suspicion,’ said the governor promptly.

 

‘He gets no newspapers?’

 

‘No, only the books he requires. He expressed a desire the other day

for Three Months in Morocco, said he had half finished it when

he was at Wandsworth, and wanted to read it again to “make

sure”—so I got it.’

 

Three days before the date fixed for the execution, the governor had

informed Manfred that, despite the presentation of a petition, the Home

Secretary saw no reason for advising the remission of the sentence.

 

‘I never expected a reprieve,’ he replied without emotion.

 

He spent much of his time chatting with the two warders. Strict

sense of duty forced them to reply in monosyllables, but he interested

them keenly with his talk of the strange places of the world. As far as

they could, they helped him pass the time, and he appreciated their

restricted tightness.

 

‘You are named Perkins,’ he said one day.

 

‘Yes,’ said the warder.

 

‘And you’re Franklin,’ he said to the other, and the man replied in

the affirmative. Manfred nodded.

 

‘When I am at liberty,’ he said, ‘I will make you some recompense

for your exemplary patience.’

 

At exercise on the Monday—Tuesday was the fatal day fixed by the

High Sheriff—he saw a civilian walking in the yard and recognized him,

and on his return to his cell he requested to see the governor.

 

‘I would like to meet Mr. Jessen,’ he said when the officer came,

and the governor demurred.

 

‘Will you be good enough to refer my request to the Home Secretary

by telegraph?’ asked Manfred, and the governor promised that he

would.

 

To his surprise, an immediate reply gave the necessary

permission.

 

Jessen stepped into the cell and nodded pleasantly to the man who

sat on the edge of the couch.

 

‘I wanted to speak to you, Jessen,’ Manfred said, and motioned him

to a seat. ‘I wanted to put the business of Starque right, once and for

all.’ Jessen smiled.

 

‘That was all right—it was an order signed by the Czar and

addressed personally to me—I could do no less than hang him,’ he

said.

 

‘Yet you may think,’ Manfred went on, ‘that we took you for this

work because—’

 

‘I know why I was taken,’ said the quiet Jessen. ‘Starque and

Francois were within the law, condemned by the law, and you strike only

at those the law has missed.’

 

Then Manfred inquired after the Guild, and Jessen brightened.

 

‘The Guild is flourishing,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I am now converting

the luggage thieves—you know, the men who haunt railway stations.’

 

‘Into—?’ asked the other.

 

‘The real thing—the porters they sometimes impersonate,’ said the

enthusiast, and added dolefully, ‘It’s terribly uphill business though,

getting characters for the men who want to go straight and have only a

ticket of leave to identify them.’ As he rose to go, Manfred shook

hands.

 

‘Don’t lose heart,’ he said.

 

‘I shall see you again,’ said Jessen, and Manfred smiled.

 

Again, if you grow weary of that repetition ‘Manfred smiled’,

remember that the two words best describe his attitude in those

dreadful days in Chelmsford.

 

There was no trace of flippancy in his treatment of the oppressing

situation. His demeanour on the occasions when he met the chaplain was

one to which the most sensitive could take no exception, but the

firmness was insuperable.

 

‘It is impossible to do anything with him,’ said the despairing

minister. ‘I am the veriest child in his hands. He makes me feel like a

lay preacher interviewing Socrates.’

 

There was no precedent for the remarkable condition of affairs, and

finally, at Manfred’s request, it was decided to omit the ceremony of

the religious service altogether.

 

In the afternoon, taking his exercise, he lifted his eyes skyward,

and the warders, following his gaze, saw in the air a great yellow

kite, bearing a banner that advertised some brand or other of motor

tires.

 

‘Yellow kite, all right,’ he improvised, and hummed a tune as he

marched round the stone circle.

 

That night,