The above reward will be paid to any person or persons who shall give such information as shall lead to the identification of the said Thery with the band known as the Four Just Men and his apprehension.
From which may be gathered that, acting on the information furnished by the editor and his assistant at two o’clock in the morning, the Direct Spanish Cable had been kept busy; important personages had been roused from their beds in Madrid, and the history of Thery as recorded in the Bureau had been reconstructed from pigeonhole records for the enlightenment of an energetic Commissioner of Police.
Sir Philip Ramon, sitting writing in his study at Portland Place, found a difficulty in keeping his mind upon the letter that lay before him.
It was a letter addressed to his agent at Branfell, the huge estate over which he, in the years he was out of office, played squire.
Neither wife nor chick nor child had Sir Philip. ‘…If by any chance these men succeed in carrying out their purpose I have made ample provision not only for yourself but for all who have rendered me faithful service,’ he wrote — from which may be gathered the tenor of his letter.
During these past few weeks, Sir Philip’s feelings towards the possible outcome of his action had undergone a change.
The irritation of a constant espionage, friendly on the one hand, menacing on the other, had engendered so bitter a feeling of resentment, that in this newer emotion all personal fear had been swallowed up. His mind was filled with one unswerving determination, to carry through the measure he had in hand, to thwart the Four Just Men, and to vindicate the integrity of a Minister of the Crown. ‘It would be absurd,’ he wrote in the course of an article entitled Individuality in its Relation to the Public Service, and which was published some months later in the Quarterly Review—’it would be monstrous to suppose that incidental criticism from a wholly unauthoritative source should affect or in any way influence a member of the Government in his conception of the legislation necessary for the millions of people entrusted to his care. He is the instrument, duly appointed, to put into tangible form the wishes and desires of those who naturally look to him not only to furnish means and methods for the betterment of their conditions, or the amelioration of irksome restrictions upon international commercial relations, but to find them protection from risks extraneous of purely commercial liabilities…in such a case a Minister of the Crown with a due appreciation of his responsibilities ceases to exist as a man and becomes merely an unhuman automaton.’
Sir Philip Ramon was a man with very few friends. He had none of the qualities that go to the making of a popular man. He was an honest man, a conscientious man, a strong man. He was the coldblooded, cynical creature that a life devoid of love had left him. He had no enthusiasm — and inspired none. Satisfied that a certain procedure was less wrong than any other, he adopted it. Satisfied that a measure was for the immediate or ultimate good of his fellows, he carried that measure through to the bitter end. It may be said of him that he had no ambitions — only aims. He was the most dangerous man in the Cabinet, which he dominated in his masterful way, for he knew not the meaning of the blessed word ‘compromise’.
If he held views on any subject under the sun, those views were to be the views of his colleagues.
Four times in the short history of the administration had Rumoured Resignation of a Cabinet Minister filled the placards of the newspapers, and each time the Minister whose resignation was ultimately recorded was the man whose views had clashed with the Foreign Secretary. In small things, as in great, he had his way.
His official residence he absolutely refused to occupy, and No. 44 Downing Street was converted into half office, half palace. Portland Place was his home, and from there he drove every morning, passing the Horse Guards clock as it finished the last stroke of ten.
A private telephone wire connected his study in Portland Place with the official residence, and but for this Sir Philip had cut himself adrift from the house in Downing Street, to occupy which had been the ambition of the great men of his party.
Now, however, with the approach of the day on which every effort would be taxed, the police insisted upon his taking up his quarters in Downing Street.
Here, they said, the task of protecting the Minister would be simplified. No. 44 Downing Street they knew. The approaches could be better guarded, and, moreover, the drive — that dangerous drive! — between Portland Place and the Foreign Office would be obviated.
It took a considerable amount of pressure and pleading to induce Sir Philip to take even this step, and it was only when it was pointed out that the surveillance to which he was being subjected would not be so apparent to himself that he yielded.
“You don’t like to find my men outside your door with your shaving water,” said Superintendent Falmouth bluntly. “You objected to one of my men being in your bathroom when you went in the other morning, and you complained about a plainclothes officer driving on your box — well, Sir Philip, in Downing Street I promise that you shan’t even see them.”
This clinched the argument.
It was just before leaving Portland Place to take up his new quarters that he sat writing to his agent whilst the detective waited outside the door.
The telephone at Sir Philip’s elbow buzzed — he hated bells — and the voice of his private secretary asked with some anxiety how long he would be.
“We have got sixty men on duty at 44,” said the secretary, zealous and young, “and today and tomorrow we shall — —” And Sir Philip listened with growing impatience to the recital.
“I wonder you have not got an iron safe to lock me in,” he said petulantly, and closed the conversation.
There was a knock at the door and Falmouth put his head inside.
“I don’t want to hurry you, sir,” he said, “but — —”
So the Foreign Secretary drove off to Downing Street in something remarkably like a temper.
For he was not used to being hurried, or taken charge of, or ordered hither and thither. It irritated him further to see the now familiar cyclists on either side of the carriage, to recognise at every few yards an obvious policeman in mufti admiring the view from the sidewalk, and when he came to Downing Street and found it barred to all carriages but his own, and an enormous crowd of morbid sightseers gathered to cheer his ingress, he felt as he had never felt before in his life — humiliated.
He found his secretary waiting in his private office with the rough draft of the speech that was to introduce the second reading of the Extradition Bill.
“We are pretty sure to meet with a great deal of opposition,” informed the secretary, “but Mainland has sent out three-line whips, and expects to get a majority of thirty-six — at the very least.”
Ramon read over the notes and found them refreshing.
They brought back the old feeling of security and importance. After all, he was a great Minister of State. Of course the threats were too absurd — the police were to blame for making so much fuss; and of course the Press — yes, that was it — a newspaper sensation.
There was something buoyant, something almost genial in his air, when he turned with a half smile to his secretary.
“Well, what about my unknown friends — what do the blackguards call themselves? — the Four Just Men?”
Even as he spoke he was acting a part; he had not forgotten their title, it was with him day and night.
The secretary hesitated; between his chief and himself the Four Just Men had been a tabooed subject.
“They — oh,