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

never hesitated to come to you—Jessen.’

 

It may be observed that ‘Mr. Long’ at the threshold of the house

became ‘Mr. Jessen’ in the intimacy of the inner room.

 

‘I owe more to you than ever you can owe to me,’ he said earnestly;

‘you put me on the track,’ he waved his hand round the room as though

the refinement of the room was the symbol of that track of which he

spoke. ‘You remember that morning?—if you have forgotten, I

haven’t—when I told you that to forget—I must drink? And you

said—’

 

‘I haven’t forgotten, Jessen,’ said the correspondent quietly; ‘and

the fact that you have accomplished all that you have is a proof that

there’s good stuff in you.’

 

The other accepted the praise without comment.

 

‘Now,’ Charles went on, ‘I want to tell you what I started out to

tell: I’m following a big story. It’s the Four Just Men story; you know

all about it? I see that you do; well, I’ve got to get into touch with

them somehow. I do not for one moment imagine that you can help me, nor

do I expect that these chaps have any accomplices amongst the people

you know.’

 

‘They have not,’ said Jessen; ‘I haven’t thought it worth while

inquiring. Would you like to go to the Guild?’

 

Charles pursed his lips in thought.

 

‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘that’s an idea; yes, when?’

 

‘Tonight—if you wish.’

 

‘Tonight let it be,’ said Charles.

 

His host rose and left the room.

 

He reappeared presently, wearing a dark overcoat and about his

throat a black silk muffler that emphasized the pallor of his strong

square face.

 

‘Wait a moment,’ he said, and unlocked a drawer, from which he took

a revolver.

 

He turned the magazine carefully, and Charles smiled.

 

‘Will that be necessary?’ he asked.

 

Jessen shook his head.

 

‘No,’ he said with a little embarrassment, ‘but—I have given up all

my follies and fancies, but this one sticks.’

 

‘The fear of discovery?’

 

Jessen nodded.

 

‘It’s the only folly left—this fear. It’s the fly in the

ointment.’

 

He led the way through the narrow passage, first having extinguished

the lamp.

 

They stood together in the dark street, whilst Jessen made sure the

fastening of the house.

 

‘Now,’ he said, and in a few minutes they found themselves amidst

the raucous confusion of a Walworth Road market-night.

 

They walked on in silence, then turning into East Street, they

threaded a way between loitering shoppers, dodged between stalls

overhung by flaring naphtha lamps, and turned sharply into a narrow

street.

 

Both men seemed sure of their ground, for they walked quickly and

unhesitatingly, and striking off through a tiny court that connected

one malodorous thoroughfare with the other, they stopped simultaneously

before the door of what appeared to be a disused factory.

 

A peaky-faced youth who sat by the door and acted as doorkeeper

thrust his hand forward as they entered, but recognizing them drew back

without a word.

 

They ascended the flight of ill-lighted stairs that confronted them,

and pushing open a door at the head of the stairs, Jessen ushered his

friend into a large hall.

 

It was a curious scene that met the journalist’s eye. Well

acquainted with ‘The Guild’ as he was, and with its extraordinary

composition, he had never yet put his foot inside its portals. Basing

his conception upon his knowledge of working-men’s clubs and

philanthropic institutions for the regeneration of degraded youth, he

missed the inevitable billiard-table; he missed, too, the table strewn

with month-old literature, but most of all he missed the smell of free

coffee.

 

The floor was covered with sawdust, and about the fire that crackled

and blazed at one end of the room there was a semicircle of chairs

occupied by men of varying ages. Old-looking young men and

young-looking old men, men in rags, men well dressed, men flashily

attired in loud clothing and resplendent with shoddy jewellery. And

they were drinking.

 

Two youths at one end of the crescent shared a quart pewter pot; the

flashy man whose voice dominated the conversation held a glass of

whisky in one beringed hand, and the white-haired man with the scarred

face who sat with bowed head listening had a spirit glass half filled

with some colourless fluid.

 

Nobody rose to greet the newcomers.

 

The flashy man nodded genially, and one of the circle pushed his

chair back to give place to Jessen.

 

‘I was just a-saying—’ said the flashy man, then looked at

Charles.

 

‘All right,’ signalled Jessen.

 

‘I was just a-sayin’ to these lads,’ continued the flashy one, ‘that

takin’ one thing with the other, there’s worse places than

“stir”.’

 

Jessen made no reply to this piece of dogmatism, and he of the rings

went on.

 

‘An’ what’s the good of a man tryin’ to go straight. The police will

pull you all the same: not reportin’ change of address, loitering with

intent; it don’t matter what you do if you’ve been in trouble once,

you’re sure to get in again.’

 

There was a murmur of assent.

 

‘Look at me,’ said the speaker with pride. ‘I’ve never tried to go

straight—been in twice an’ it took six policemen to take me last time,

and they had to use the “stick”.’

 

Jessen looked at him with mild curiosity.

 

‘What does that prove, except that the policemen were pretty

soft?’

 

‘Not a bit!’ The man stood up.

 

Under the veneer of tawdry foppery, Charles detected the animal

strength of the criminal.

 

‘Why, when I’m fit, as I am now,’ the man went on, ‘there ain’t two

policemen, nor four neither, that could handle me.’

 

Jessen’s hand shot out and caught him by the forearm.

 

‘Get away,’ he suggested, and the man swung round like lightning,

but Jessen had his other arm in a grip of iron.

 

‘Get away,’ he said again; but the man was helpless, and knew it,

and after a pause Jessen released his hold.

 

‘How was that?’ he asked.

 

The amused smiles of the men did not embarrass the prisoner.

 

‘The guv’nor’s different,’ he explained easily; ‘he’s got a knack of

his own that the police haven’t got.’

 

Jessen drew up a chair, and whatever there was in the action that

had significance, it was sufficient to procure an immediate

silence.

 

He looked round the attentive faces that were turned toward him.

Charles, an interested spectator, saw the eager faces that bent in his

friend’s direction, and marvelled not a little at the reproductive

qualities of the seed he had sown.

 

Jessen began to speak slowly, and Charles saw that what he said was

in the nature of an address. That these addresses of Jessen were

nothing unusual, and that they were welcome, was evident from the

attention with which they were received.

 

‘What Falk has been telling you,’ said Jessen, indicating the man

with the rings, ‘is true—so far as it goes. There are worse places

than “stir”, and it’s true that the police don’t give an old lag

a chance, but that’s because a lag won’t change his job. And a lag

won’t change his job, because he doesn’t know any other trade where he

gets money so quickly. Wally’—he jerked his head toward a

weedy-looking youth—‘Wally there got a stretch for what? For stuff

that fetched thirty pounds from a fence. Twelve months’ hard work for

thirty pounds! It works out at about 10s, 6d. a week. And his

lawyer and the mouthpiece cost him a fiver out of that. Old man

Garth’—he pointed to the white-headed man with the gin—‘did a five

stretch for less than that, and he’s out on brief. His wage works out

at about a shilling a week.’

 

He checked the impatient motion that Falk made.

 

‘I know that Falk would say,’ he went on smoothly, ‘that what I’m

saying is outside the bargain; when I fixed up the Guild, I gave my

‘davy that there wouldn’t be any parson talk or Come All-ye-Faithful

singing. Everybody knows that being on the crook’s a mug’s game, and I

don’t want to rub it in. What I’ve always said and done is in the

direction of making you fellows earn bigger money at your own

trade.

 

‘There’s a man who writes about the army who’s been trying to induce

soldiers to learn trades, and he started right by making the Tommies

dissatisfied with their own trade; and that is what I am trying to do.

What did I do with young Isaacs? I didn’t preach at him, and I didn’t

pray over him. Ike was one of the finest snide merchants in London. He

used to turn out half-crowns made from pewter pots that defied

detection. They rang true and they didn’t bend. Ike got three years,

and when he came out I found him a job. Did I try to make him a

wood-chopper, or a Salvation Army plough-boy? No. He’d have been back

on the crook in a week if I had. I got a firm of medal makers in

Birmingham to take him, and when Ike found himself amongst plaster

moulds and electric baths, and discovered he could work at his own

trade honestly, he stuck to it.’

 

‘We ain’t snide merchants,’ growled Falk discontentedly.

 

‘It’s the same with all branches,’ Jessen went on, ‘only you

chaps don’t know it. Take tale-pitching—’

 

It would not be fair to follow Jessen through the elaborate

disquisition by which he proved to the satisfaction of his audience

that the ‘confidence’ man was a born commercial traveller. Many of his

arguments were as unsound as they could well be; he ignored first

principles, and glossed over what seemed to such a clear-headed hearer

as Charles to be insuperable obstacles in the scheme of regeneration.

But his audience was convinced. The fringe of men round the fire was

reinforced as he continued. Men came into the room singly, and in twos

and threes, and added themselves to the group at the fire. The news had

spread that Jessen was talking—they called him ‘Mr. Long,’ by the

way—and some of the newcomers arrived breathlessly, as though they had

run in order that no part of the address should be missed.

 

That the advocate of discontent had succeeded in installing into the

minds of his hearers that unrest and dissatisfaction which he held to

be the basis of a new moral code, was certain. For every face bore the

stamp of introspective doubt.

 

Interesting as it all was, Charles Garrett had not lost sight of the

object of his visit, and he fidgeted a little as the speaker

proceeded.

 

Immediately on entering the room he had grasped the exact

relationship in which Jessen stood to his pupils. Jessen he knew could

put no direct question as to their knowledge of the Four Just Men

without raising a feeling of suspicion which would have been fatal to

the success of the mission, and indeed would have imperilled the very

existence of the ‘Guild’.

 

It was when Jessen had finished speaking, and had answered a dozen

questions fired simultaneously from a dozen quarters, and had answered

the questions that had arisen out of these queries, that an opening

came from an unexpected quarter.

 

For, with the serious business of the meeting disposed of, the

questions took the inevitable facetious turn.

 

‘What trade would you give the Four Just Men?’ asked Falk

flippantly, and there was a little rumble of laughter.

 

The journalist’s eyes met the reformer’s for one second, and through

the minds of both men flashed the answer. Jessen’s mouth