From the 1930 novel. In another “impossible” crime, a bad-tempered blind moneylender is found shot to death.

The Share Out. Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1962. Lee (Meredith), Alexander Knox, Moira Redmond. Directed by Glaister. From Jack O’Judgment (1920). A shady private investigator tries to clear his past by helping Scotland Yard close in on a large blackmail ring, many of whose members are suddenly murdered.

Number Six. Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1962. Ivan Desny, Nadja Regin, Michael Goodliffe, Brian Bedford. Directed by Tronson. From the 1927 novel. Criminals try to ferret out the identity of “Number 6,” Scotland Yard’s secret agent.

Although the series continued for several more years, less attention was paid to Wallace sources.

Television

In 1959 thirty-nine half-hour television programs were fashioned from The Four Just Men, featuring, in turn, the adventures of Dan Dailey, Jack Hawkins, Richard Conte, and Vittorio De Sica, who, as private citizens, corrected injustices in various parts of the world.

Plays

Wallace was quite successful in contributing to England’s rich tradition of melodrama theater with such plays as The Ringers (1926) and The Terror (1927); as late as the 1950s, long after his death, Princess Margaret and Elsa Maxwell participated in a society staging for charity of The Frog, which had been adapted from Wallace’s The Fellowship of the Frog (1925) by Ian Hay. Among Broadway productions, he is best remembered for Criminal at Large (a version of the stranglings at the Priory of The Frightened Lady of 1932) and On the Spot, a popular drama filmed as Dangerous to Know (1938). In this play, staged in London in 1930 and on Broadway in 1931, a gangster czar (closely resembling Al Capone) living in a Chicago penthouse is ultimately done in by his wronged Chinese mistress (Anna May Wong). Typically, Wallace wrote the play in four days. It made a star of Charles Laughton.

PROLOGUE

SOUTH OF FLORENCE BY some sixty miles, and west of Rome by almost thrice the distance, upon three hills, is Siena, the most equable of the cities of Tuscany.

On the Terzo di Città in I know not what contrada, is the Palazzo Festini.

It stands aloof in its gloomy and dilapidated magnificence, and since it dates from the adjacent Baptistery of S. Giovanni, it leaves the impression of being a crumbling and disgruntled fragment of the sacred edifice that has wandered away in sullen rage to decay at its leisure.

Here, in penurious grandeur, dwelt the Festinis, who claimed descent from none other than Guido Novello, of whom Compagni, the arch-apologist, wrote: “Il conte Guido non aspettò il fine, ma senza dare colpo di spada si parti.”*

The Festini was a family to the name of which the Italian nobility listened with immobile faces. And if you chose to praise them they would politely agree; or if you condemned them they would listen in silence; but if you questioned them as to their standing in the hierarchy, you might be sure that, from Rome to Milan, your inquiry would be met by an immediate, but even, change of subject.

The Festinis, whatever might be their relationship with Guido the Coward, effectively carried on the methods of the Polomei, the Salvani, the Ponzi, the Piccolomini, and the Forteguerri.

The vendettas of the middle ages were revived and sustained by these products of nineteenth century civilization, and old Salvani Festini had, as was notoriously evident, gone outside the circumscribed range of his own family grievances, and had allied himself, either actively or sympathetically, with every secret society that menaced the good government of Italy.

It was a hot June afternoon, in the year ’99, when a man and two youths sat at their midday meal in the gloomy dining-room of the Palazzo.

The man who sat at the head of the table was, despite his age, a broad-shouldered man of apparent vitality; a leonine head surmounted by a mane of grey hair would have distinguished him without the full beard which fell over his black velvet waistcoat.

Yet, for all his patriarchal appearance, there was something in the seamed white face, in the cold eyes which stared from under his busy brows, which was sinister and menacing.

He ate in silence, scarcely troubling to answer the questions which were put to him.

The boy on his right was a beautiful lad of seventeen; he had the ivory complexion, the perfect, clean-cut, patrician features which characterized the Italian nobility. His lustrous brown eyes, his delicate mouth, his almost effeminate chin, testified for the race from which he sprang.

The young man sitting opposite was four years older. He was at the stage when youth was merging into manhood, with disastrous consequences to facial contours. He seemed thin, almost hollow-jawed, and only the steady quality of his grave eyes saved him from positive ugliness.

“But, father,” asked the younger lad, “what makes you think that the Government suspects that you know about the ‘Red Hand’?”

The older youth said nothing, but his inquiring eyes were fixed upon his father.

Salvani Festini brought his mind back to the present with a start.

“Eh?” he asked.

His voice was gruff, but not unkindly, as he addressed the boy; and the light of unconscious pride which shone in his eyes as he looked at the youth, softened the forbidding expression of his face.

“I am very well informed, my son,” he said with a gentle growl. “You know we have excellent information. The carbineers are pursuing their investigations, and that infernal friend of yours”—he turned to the elder son—“is at the head of the inquisitors.”

The youth addressed smiled.

“Who is this?” he asked innocently.

The old man shot a glance of suspicion at his son.

“Tillizini,” he said shortly. “The old fool—why doesn’t he keep to his books and his lectures?”

“He has been very kind to me,” said the younger man. He spoke thoughtfully, reflectively. “I am sorry he has annoyed you, father; but it is his business—this investigation of crime.”

“Crime!” roared the old man. “How dare you, a son of mine, sitting at my own table, refer to the actions of the ‘Red Hand’ as crime!”

His face went red with rage, and he cast a glance of malevolence at his heir which might well have shocked a more susceptible man.

But Antonio Festini was used to such exhibitions. He was neither embarrassed nor distressed by this fresh exhibition of his father’s dislike. He knew, and did not resent, the favouritism shown to Simone, his brother. It did not make him love his brother less, nor dislike his father more.

Antonio Festini had many qualities which his countrymen do not usually possess.