The Council of Justice Read Online

'I don't expect they'll return, but if they do, take 'em.'

  Then he flew through the deserted streets as fast as a motor-car could carry him, and woke the chief commissioner from a sound sleep.

  'What is it?' he asked as he led the detective to his study.

  Falmouth showed him the plans.

  The commissioner raised his eyebrows, and whistled.

  'That's what I said,' confessed Falmouth.

  The chief spread the plans upon the big table.

  'Wandsworth, Pentonville and Reading,' said the commissioner, 'Plans, and remarkably good plans, of all three prisons.'

  Falmouth indicated the writing in the cramped hand and the carefully ruled lines that had been drawn in red ink.

  'Yes, I see them,' said the commissioner, and read '"Wall 3 feet thick—dynamite here, warder on duty here—can be shot from wall, distance to entrance to prison hall 25 feet; condemned cell here, walls 3 feet, one window, barred 10 feet 3 inches from ground".'

  'They've got the thing down very fine—what is this— Wandsworth?'

  'It's the same with the others, sir,' said Falmouth. 'They've got distances, heights and posts worked out; they must have taken years to get this information.'

  'One thing is evident,' said the commissioner; 'they'll do nothing until after the trial—all these plans have been drawn with the condemned cell as the point of objective.'

  Next morning Manfred received a visit from Falmouth.

  'I have to tell you, Mr. Manfred,' he said, 'that we have in our possession full details of your contemplated rescue.'

  Manfred looked puzzled.

  'Last night your two friends escaped by the skin of their teeth, leaving behind them elaborate plans—'

  'In writing?' asked Manfred, with his quick smile.

  'In writing,' said Falmouth solemnly. 'I think it is my duty to tell you this, because it seems that you are building too much upon what is practically an impossibility, an escape from gaol.'

  'Yes,' answered Manfred absently, 'perhaps so—in writing I think you said.'

  'Yes, the whole thing was worked out'—he thought he had said quite enough, and turned the subject. 'Don't you think you ought to change your mind and retain a lawyer?'

  'I think you're right,' said Manfred slowly. 'Will you arrange for a member of some respectable firm of solicitors to see me?'

  'Certainly,' said Falmouth, 'though you've left your defence—'

  'Oh, it isn't my defence,' said Manfred cheerfully; 'only I think I ought to make a will.'

  They were privileged people who gained admission to the Old Bailey, people with tickets from sheriffs, reporters, great actors, and very successful authors. The early editions of the evening newspapers announced the arrival of these latter spectators. The crowd outside the court contented themselves with discussing the past and the probable future of the prisoner.

  The Megaphone had scored heavily again, for it published in extenso the particulars of the prisoner's will. It referred to this in its editorial columns variously as 'An Astounding Document' and 'An Extraordinary Fragment'. It was remarkable alike for the amount bequeathed, and for the generosity of its legacies.

  Nearly half a million was the sum disposed of, and of this the astonishing sum of £60,000 was bequeathed to 'the sect known as the "Rational Faithers" for the furtherance of their campaign against capital punishment', a staggering legacy remembering that the Four Just Men knew only one punishment for the people who came under its ban.

  'You want this kept quiet, of course,' said the lawyer when the will had been attested.

  'Not a bit,' said Manfred; 'in fact I think you had better hand a copy to the Megaphone.'

  'Are you serious?' asked the dumbfounded lawyer.

  'Perfectly so,' said the other. 'Who knows,' he smiled, 'it might influence public opinion in—er—my favour.'

  So the famous will became public property, and when Manfred, climbing the narrow wooden stairs that led to the dock of the Old Bailey, came before the crowded court, it was this latest freak of his that the humming court discussed.

  'Silence!'

  He looked round the big dock curiously, and when a warder pointed out the seat, he nodded, and sat down. He got up when the indictment was read.

  'Are you guilty or not guilty?' he was asked, and replied briefly:

  'I enter no plea.'

  He was interested in the procedure. The scarlet-robed judge with his old, wise face and his quaint, detached air interested him mostly. The businesslike sheriffs in furs, the clergyman who sat with crossed legs, the triple row of wigged barristers, the slaving bench of reporters with their fierce whispers of instructions as they passed their copy to the waiting boys, and the strong force of police that held the court: they had all a special interest for him.

  The leader for the Crown was a little man with a keen, strong face and a convincing dramatic delivery. He seemed to be possessed all the time with a desire to deal fairly with the issues, fairly to the Crown and fairly to the prisoner. He was not prepared, he said, to labour certain points which had been brought forward at the police-court inquiry, or to urge the jury that the accused man was wholly without redeeming qualities.

  He would not even say that the man who had been killed, and with whose killing Manfred was charged, was a worthy or a desirable citizen of the country. Witnesses who had come forward to attest their knowledge of the deceased, were ominously silent on the point of his moral character. He was quite prepared to accept the statement he was a bad man, an evil influence on his associates, a corrupting influence on the young women whom he employed, a breaker of laws, a blackguard, a debauchee.

  'But, gentlemen of the jury,' said the counsel impressively, 'a civilized community such as ours has accepted a system—intricate and imperfect though it may be—by which the wicked and the evil-minded are punished. Generation upon generation of wise law-givers have moulded and amended a scale of punishment to meet every known delinquency. It has established its system laboriously, making great national sacrifices for the principles that system involved. It has wrested with its life-blood the charters of a great liberty—the liberty of a law administered by its chosen officers and applied in the spirit of untainted equity.'

  So he went on to speak of the Four Just Men who had founded a machinery for punishment, who had gone outside and had overridden the law; who had condemned and executed their judgment independent and in defiance of the established code.

  'Again I say, that I will not commit myself to the statement that they punished unreasonably: that with the evidence against their victims, such as they possessed, the law officers of the Crown would have hesitated at initiating a prosecution. If it had pleased them to have taken an abstract view of this or that offence, and they had said this or that man is deserving of punishment, we, the representatives of the established law, could not have questioned for one moment the justice of their reasoning. But we have come into conflict on the question of the adequacy of punishment, and upon the more serious question of the right of the individual to inflict that punishment, which results in the appearance of this man in the dock on a charge of murder.'

  Throughout the opening speech, Manfred leant forward, following the counsel's words.

  Once or twice he nodded, as though he were in agreement with the speaker, and never once did he show sign of dissent.

  The witnesses came in procession. The constable again, and the doctor, and the voluble man with the squint. As he finished with each, the counsel asked whether he had any question to put, but Manfred shook his head.

  'Have you ever seen the accused before?' the judge asked the last witness.

  'No, sar, I haf not,' said the witness emphatically, 'I haf not'ing to say against him.'

  As he left the witness-box, he said audibly:

  'There are anoder three yet—I haf no desire to die,' and amidst the laughter that followed this exhibition of caution, Manfred recalled him sharply.

  'If you have no objection, my lord?' he said.

  'None whatever,' replied the judge courteously.

  'You have mentioned something about another three,' he said. 'Do you suggest that they have threatened you?'

  'No, sar—no!' said the eager little man.

  'I cannot examine counsel,' said Manfred, smiling; 'but I put it to him, that there has been no suggestion of intimidation of witnesses in this case.'

  'None whatever,' counsel hastened to say; 'it is due to you to make that statement.'

  'Against this man'—the prisoner pointed to the witness-box—'we have nothing that would justify our action. He is a saccharine smuggler, and a dealer in stolen property—but the law will take care of him.'

  'It's a lie,' said the little man in the box, white and shaking; 'it is libellous!'

  Manfred smiled again and dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

  The judge might have reproved the prisoner for his irrelevant accusation, but allowed the incident to pass.

  The case for the prosecution was drawing to a close when an official of the court came to the judge's side and, bending down, began a whispered conversation with him.

  As the final witness withdrew, the judge announced an adjournment and the prosecuting counsel was summoned to his lordship's private room.

  In the cells beneath the court, Manfred received a hint at what was coming and looked grave.

  After the interval, the judge, on taking his seat, addressed the jury:

  'In a case presenting the unusual features that characterize this,' he said, 'it is to be expected that there will occur incidents of an almost unprecedented nature. The circumstances under which evidence will be given now, are, however, not entirely without precedent.' He opened a thick law book before him at a place marked by a slip of paper. 'Here in the Queen against Forsythe, and earlier, the Queen against Berander, and earlier still and quoted in all these rulings, the King against Sir Thomas Mandory, we have parallel cases.' He closed the book.

  'Although the accused has given no intimation of his desire to call witnesses on his behalf, a gentleman has volunteered his evidence.