Manfred stirred the glass of creamy liquid that stood at his elbow and nodded his head with an amused twinkle in his grey eyes.
“I remember — several people died, and the principal witness at the trial of the expert in explosives was the man for whom the bomb was intended.”
Thery cleared his throat as if to speak, and the three looked at him curiously. There was some resentment in Thery’s voice.
“I do not profess to be a great man like you, senors. Half the time I don’t understand what you are talking about — you speak of governments and kings and constitutions and causes. If a man does me an injury I smash his head” — he hesitated— “I do not know how to say it…but I mean…well, you kill people without hating them, men who have not hurt you. Now, that is not my way…” He hesitated again, tried to collect his thoughts, looked intently at the middle of the roadway, shook his head, and relapsed into silence.
The others looked at him, then at one another, and each man smiled. Manfred took a bulky case from his pocket, extracted an untidy cigarette, re-rolled it deftly and struck a government match on the sole of his boot.
“Your-way-my-dear-Thery” — he puffed— “is a fool’s way. You kill for benefit; we kill for justice, which lifts us out of the ruck of professional slayers. When we see an unjust man oppressing his fellows; when we see an evil thing done against the good God” — Thery crossed him self— “and against man — and know that by the laws of man this evildoer may escape punishment — we punish.”
“Listen,” interrupted the taciturn Poiccart: “once there was a girl, young and beautiful, up there” — he waved his hand northward with unerring instinct— “and a priest — a priest, you understand — and the parents winked at it because it is often done…but the girl was filled with loathing and shame, and would not go a second time, so he trapped her and kept her in a house, and then when the bloom was off turned her out, and I found her. She was nothing to me, but I said, ‘Here is a wrong that the law cannot adequately right.’ So one night I called on the priest with my hat over my eyes and said that I wanted him to come to a dying traveller. He would not have come then, but I told him that the dying man was rich and was a great person. He mounted the horse I had brought, and we rode to a little house on the mountain…I locked the door and he turned round — so! Trapped, and he knew it. ‘What are you going to do?’ he said with a gasping noise. ‘I am going to kill you, senor,’ I said, and he believed me. I told him the story of the girl…He screamed when I moved towards him, but he might as well have saved his breath. ‘Let me see a priest,’ he begged; and I handed him — a mirror.”
Poiccart stopped to sip his coffee.
“They found him on the road next day without a mark to show how he died,” he said simply.
“How?” Thery bent forward eagerly, but Poiccart permitted himself to smile grimly, and made no response.
Thery bent his brows and looked suspiciously from one to the other.
“Government, and there are men whom the Government have never heard of. You remember one Garcia, Manuel Garcia, leader in the Carlist movement; he is in England; it is the only country where he is safe; from England he directs the movement here, the great movement. You know of what I speak?”
Thery nodded.
“This year as well as last there has been a famine, men have been dying about the church doors, starving in the public squares; they have watched corrupt Government succeed corrupt Government; they have seen millions flow from the public treasury into the pockets of politicians. This year something will happen; the old regime must go. The Government know this; they know where the danger lies, they know their salvation can only come if Garcia is delivered into their hands before the organisation for revolt is complete. But Garcia is safe for the present and would be safe for all time were it not for a member of the English Government, who is about to introduce and pass into law a Bill. When that is passed, Garcia is as good as dead. You must help us to prevent that from ever becoming law; that is why we have sent for you.”
Thery looked bewildered. “But how?” he stammered.
Manfred drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to Thery. “This, I think,” he said, speaking deliberately, “is an exact copy of the police description of yourself.” Thery nodded. Manfred leant over and, pointing to a word that occurred half way down the sheet, “Is that your trade?” he asked.
Thery looked puzzled. “Yes,” he replied.
“Do you really know anything about that trade?” asked Manfred earnestly; and the other two men leant forward to catch the reply.
“I know,” said Thery slowly, “everything there is to be known: had it not been for a — mistake I might have earned great money.”
Manfred heaved a sigh of relief and nodded to his two companions.
“Then,” said he briskly, “the English Minister is a dead man.”
Chapter I
A Newspaper Story
On the fourteenth day of August, 19 — , a tiny paragraph appeared at the foot of an unimportant page in London’s most sober journal to the effect that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had been much annoyed by the receipt of a number of threatening letters, and was prepared to pay a reward of fifty pounds to any person who would give such information as would lead to the apprehension and conviction of the person or persons, etc. The few people who read London’s most sober journal thought, in their ponderous Athenaeum Club way, that it was a remarkable thing that a Minister of State should be annoyed at anything; more remarkable that he should advertise his annoyance, and most remarkable of all that he could imagine for one minute that the offer of a reward would put a stop to the annoyance.
News editors of less sober but larger circulated newspapers, wearily scanning the dull columns of Old Sobriety, read the paragraph with a newly acquired interest.
“Hullo, what’s this?” asked Smiles of the Comet, and cut out the paragraph with huge shears, pasted it upon a sheet of copy-paper and headed it:
Who is Sir Philip’s Correspondent?
As an afterthought — the Comet being in Opposition — he prefixed an introductory paragraph, humorously suggesting that the letters were from an intelligent electorate grown tired of the shilly-shallying methods of the Government.
The news editor of the Evening World — a white-haired gentleman of deliberate movement — read the paragraph twice, cut it out carefully, read it again and, placing it under a paperweight, very soon forgot all about it.
The news editor of the Megaphone, which is a very bright newspaper indeed, cut the paragraph as he read it, rang a bell, called a reporter, all in a breath, so to speak, and issued a few terse instructions.
“Go down to Portland Place, try to see Sir Philip Ramon, secure the story of that paragraph — why he is threatened, what he is threatened with; get a copy of one of the letters if you can. If you cannot see Ramon, get hold of a secretary.”
And the obedient reporter went forth.
He returned in an hour in that state of mysterious agitation peculiar to the reporter who has got a ‘beat’. The news editor duly reported to the Editor-in-Chief, and that great man said, “That’s very good, that’s very good indeed” — which was praise of the highest order.
What was ‘very good indeed’ about the reporter’s story may be gathered from the half-column that appeared in the Megaphone on the following day:
CABINET MINISTER IN DANGER
THREATS TO MURDER THE FOREIGN SECRETARY