The Council of Justice Read Online

This taxi had been his constant attendant during the last hour, but he did not know it.

  He dipped his hand into his overcoat pocket and drew forth the machine. It was one of Culveri's masterpieces and, to an extent, experimental—that much the master had warned him in a letter that bore the date-mark 'Riga'. He felt with his thumb for the tiny key that 'set' the machine and pushed it.

  Then he slipped into the doorway of No. 196 and placed the bomb. It was done in a second, and so far as he could tell no man had seen him leave the pathway and he was back again on the sidewalk very quickly. But as he stepped back, he heard a shout and a man darted across the road, calling on him to surrender. From the left two men were running, and he saw the man in evening dress blowing a whistle.

  He was caught; he knew it. There was a chance of escape—the other end of the street was clear—he turned and ran like the wind. He could hear his pursuers pattering along behind him. His ear, alert to every phase of the chase, heard one pair of feet check and spring up the steps of 196. He glanced round. They were gaining on him, and he turned suddenly and fired three times. Somebody fell; he saw that much. Then right ahead of him a tall policeman sprang from the shadows and clasped him round the waist.

  'Hold that man!' shouted Falmouth, running up. Blowing hard came the night wanderer, a ragged object but skilful, and he had Von Dunop handcuffed in a trice.

  It was he who noticed the limpness of the prisoner.

  'Hullo!' he said, then held out his hand. 'Show a light here.'

  There were half a dozen policemen and the inevitable crowd on the spot by now, and the rays of the bull's-eye focused on the detective's hand. It was red with blood. Falmouth seized a lantern and flashed it on the man's face.

  There was no need to look farther. He was dead,—dead with the inevitable label affixed to the handle of the knife that killed him.

  Falmouth rapped out an oath.

  'It is incredible; it is impossible! he was running till the constable caught him, and he has not been out of our hands! Where is the officer who held him?'

  Nobody answered, certainly not the tall policeman, who was at that moment being driven eastward, making a rapid change into the conventional evening costume of an English gentleman.

  To fathom the mind of the Woman of Gratz is no easy task, and one not to be lightly undertaken. Remembering her obscure beginning, the bare-legged child drinking in revolutionary talk in the Transylvanian kitchen, and the development of her intellect along unconventional lines—remembering, also, that early in life she made acquaintance with the extreme problems of life and death in their least attractive forms, and that the proportion of things had been grossly distorted by her teachers, you may arrive at a point where your vacillating judgement hesitates between blame and pity.

  I would believe that the power of introspection had no real place in her mental equipment, else how can we explain her attitude towards the man whom she had once defied and reconcile those outbursts of hers wherein she called for his death, for his terrible punishment, wherein, too, she allowed herself the rare luxury of unrestrained speech, how can we reconcile these tantrums with the fact that this man's voice filled her thoughts day and night, the recollection of this man's eyes through his mask followed her every movement, till the image of him became an obsession?

  It may be that I have no knowledge of women and their ways (there is no subtle smugness in the doubt I express) and that her inconsistency was general to her sex. It must not be imagined that she had spared either trouble or money to secure the extermination of her enemies, and the enemies of the Red Hundred. She had described them, as well as she could, after her first meeting, and the sketches made under her instruction had been circulated by the officers of the Reds.

  Sitting near the window of her house, she mused, lulled by the ceaseless hum of traffic in the street below, and half dozing.

  The turning of the door-handle woke her from her dreams.

  It was Schmidt, the unspeakable Schmidt, all perspiration and excitement. His round coarse face glowed with it, and he could scarcely bring his voice to tell the news.

  'We have him! we have him!' he cried in glee, and snapped his fingers. 'Oh, the good news!—I am the first! Nobody has been, Little Friend? I have run and have taken taxis—'

  'You have—whom?' she asked.

  'The man—one of the men' he said, 'who killed Starque and Francois, and—'

  'Which—which man?' she said harshly.

  He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a discoloured sketch.

  'Oh!' she said, it could not be the man whom she had defied, 'Why, why?' she asked stormily, 'Why only this man? Why not the others—why not the leader?—have they caught him and lost him?'

  Chagrin and astonishment sat on Schmidt's round face. His disappointment was almost comic.

  'But, Little Mother!' he said, crestfallen and bewildered, 'this is one—we did not hope even for one and—'

  The storm passed over.

  'Yes, yes,' she said wearily, 'one—even one is good. They shall learn that the Red Hundred can still strike—this leader shall know —This man shall have a death,' she said, looking at Schmidt 'worthy of his importance. Tell me how he was captured.'

  'It was the picture,' said the eager Schmidt, 'the picture you had drawn. One of our comrades thought he recognized him and followed him to his house.'

  'He shall be tried—tonight,' and she spent the day anticipating her triumph.

  Conspirators do not always choose dark arches for their plottings. The Red Hundred especially were notorious for the likeliness of their rendezvous.