The Law of the Four Just Men · The Man Who Hated Amelia Jones (1/2)

The Man Who Hated Amelia Jones

There was a letter that came to Leon Gonsalez, and the stamp bore the image and superscription of Alphonse XIII. It was from a placid man who had written his letter in the hour of siesta, when Cordova slept, and he had scribbled all the things which had come into his head as he sat in an orange bower overlooking the lordly Guadalquivir, now in yellow spate.

“It is from Poiccart,” said Leon.

“Yes?” replied George Manfred, half asleep in a big armchair before the fire.

That and a green-shaded reading lamp supplied the illumination to their comfortable Jermyn Street flat at the moment.

“And what,” said George, stretching himself, “what does our excellent friend Poiccart have to say?”

“A blight has come upon his onions,” said Leon solemnly and Manfred chuckled and then was suddenly grave.

There was a time when the name of these three, with one who now lay in the Bordeaux cemetery, had stricken terror to the hearts of evildoers. In those days the Four Just Men were a menace to the sleep of many cunning men who had evaded the law, yet had not evaded this ubiquitous organisation, which slew ruthlessly in the name of Justice.

Poiccart was growing onions! He sighed and repeated the words aloud.

“And why not?” demanded Leon. “Have you read of the Three Musketeers?”

“Surely,” said Manfred, with a smile at the fire.

“In what book, may I ask?” demanded Leon.

“Why, in The Three Musketeers, of course,” replied Manfred in surprise.

“Then you did wrong,” said Leon Gonsalez promptly. “To love the Three Musketeers, you must read of them in The Iron Mask. When one of them has grown fat and is devoting himself to his raiment, and one is a mere courtier of the King of France, and the other is old and full of sorrow for his lovesick child. Then they become human, my dear Manfred, just as Poiccart becomes human when he grows onions. Shall I read you bits?”

“Please,” said Manfred, properly abashed.

“H’m,” read Gonsalez, “ ‘I told you about the onions, George. I have some gorgeous roses. Manfred would love them⁠ ⁠… do not take too much heed of this new blood test, by which the American doctor professes that he can detect degrees of relationship⁠ ⁠… the new little pigs are doing exceedingly well. There is one that is exceptionally intelligent and contemplative. I have named him George.’ ”

George Manfred by the fire squirmed in his chair and chuckled.

“ ‘This will be a very good year for wine, I am told,’ ” Leon read on, “ ‘but the oranges are not as plentiful as they were last year⁠ ⁠… do you know that the fingerprints of twins are identical? Curiously enough the fingerprints of twins of the anthropoid ape are dissimilar. I wish you would get information on this subject⁠ ⁠…’ ”

He read on, little scraps of domestic news, fleeting excursions into scientific side-issues, tiny scraps of gossip⁠—they filled ten closely written pages.

Leon folded the letter and put it in his pocket.

“Of course he’s not right about the fingerprints of twins being identical. That was one of the illusions of the excellent Lombroso. Anyway the fingerprint system is unsatisfactory.”

“I never heard it called into question,” said George in surprise. “Why isn’t it satisfactory?”

Leon rolled a cigarette with deft fingers, licked down the paper and lit the ragged end before he replied.

“At Scotland Yard, they have, let us say, one hundred thousand fingerprints. In Britain there are fifty million inhabitants. One hundred thousand is exactly one five-hundredth of fifty millions. Suppose you were a police officer and you were called to the Albert Hall where five hundred people were assembled and told that one of these had in his possession stolen property and you received permission to search them. Would you be content with searching one and giving a clean bill to the rest?”

“Of course not,” said Manfred, “but I don’t see what you mean.”

“I mean that until the whole of the country and every country in Europe adopts a system by which every citizen registers his fingerprints and until all the countries have an opportunity of exchanging those fingerprints and comparing them with their own, it is ridiculous to say that no two prints are alike.”

“That settles the fingerprint system,” said Manfred, sotto voce.

“Logically it does,” said the complacent Leon, “but actually it will not, of course.”

There was a long silence after this and then Manfred reached to a case by the side of the fireplace and took down a book.

Presently he heard the creak of a chair as Gonsalez rose and the soft “pad” of a closing door. Manfred looked up at the clock and, as he knew, it was half past eight.

In five minutes Leon was back again. He had changed his clothing and, as Manfred had once said before, his disguise was perfect. It was not a disguise in the accepted understanding of the word, for he had not in any way touched his face, or changed the colour of his hair.

Only by his artistry he contrived to appear just as he wished to appear, an extremely poor man. His collar was clean, but frayed. His boots were beautifully polished, but they were old and patched. He did not permit the crudity of a heel worn down, but had fixed two circular rubber heels just a little too large for their foundations.

“You are an old clerk battling with poverty, and striving to the end to be genteel,” said Manfred.

Gonsalez shook his head.

“I am a solicitor who, twenty years ago, was struck off the rolls and ruined because I helped a man to escape the processes of the law. An ever so much more sympathetic role, George. Moreover, it brings people to me for advice. One of these nights you must come down to the public bar of the Cow and Compasses and hear me discourse upon the Married Woman’s Property Act.”

“I never asked you what you were before,” said George. “Good hunting, Leon, and my respectful salutations to Amelia Jones!”

Gonsalez was biting his lips thoughtfully and looking into the fire and now he nodded.

“Poor Amelia Jones?” he said softly.

“You’re a wonderful fellow,” smiled Manfred, “only you could invest a charwoman of middle age with the glamour of romance.”

Leon was helping himself into a threadbare overcoat.

“There was an English poet once⁠—it was Pope, I think⁠—who said that everybody was romantic who admired a fine thing, or did one. I rather think Amelia Jones has done both.”

The Cow and Compasses is a small public-house in Treet Road, Deptford. The gloomy thoroughfare was well-nigh empty, for it was a grey cold night when Leon turned into the bar. The uninviting weather may have been responsible for the paucity of clients that evening, for there were scarcely half a dozen people on the sanded floor when he made his way to the bar and ordered a claret and soda.

One who had been watching for him started up from the deal form on which she had been sitting and subsided again when he walked toward her with glass in hand.

“Well, Mrs. Jones,” he greeted her, “and how are you this evening?”

She was a stout woman with a white worn face and hands that trembled spasmodically.

“I am glad you’ve come, sir,” she said.

She held a little glass of port in her hand, but it was barely touched. It was on one desperate night when in an agony of terror and fear this woman had fled from her lonely home to the light and comfort of the public-house that Leon had met her. He was at the time pursuing with the greatest caution a fascinating skull which he had seen on the broad shoulders of a Covent Garden porter. He had tracked the owner to his home and to his place of recreation and was beginning to work up to his objective, which was to secure the history and the measurements of this unimaginative bearer of fruit, when the stout charwoman had drifted into his orbit. Tonight she evidently had something on her mind of unusual importance, for she made three lame beginnings before she plunged into the matter which was agitating her.

“Mr. Lucas” (this was the name Gonsalez had given to the habitués of the Cow and Compasses), “I want to ask you a great favour. You’ve been very kind to me, giving me advice about my husband, and all that. But this is a big favour and you’re a very busy gentleman, too.”

She looked at him appealingly, almost pleadingly.

“I have plenty of time just now,” said Gonsalez.

“Would you come with me into the country tomorrow?” she asked. “I want you to⁠—to⁠—to see somebody.”

“Why surely, Mrs. Jones,” said Gonsalez.

“Would you be at Paddington Station at nine o’clock in the morning? I would pay your fare,” she went on fervently. “Of course, I shouldn’t allow you to go to any expense⁠—I’ve got a bit of money put by.”

“As to that,” said Leon, “I’ve made a little money myself today, so don’t trouble about the fare. Have you heard from your husband?”

“Not from him,” she shook her head, “but from another man who has just come out of prison.”

Her lips trembled and tears were in her eyes.

“He’ll do it, I know he’ll do it,” she said, with a catch in her voice, “but it’s not me that I’m thinking of.”

Leon opened his eyes.

“Not you?” he repeated.

He had suspected the third factor, yet he had never been able to fit it in the scheme of this commonplace woman.

“No, sir, not me,” she said miserably. “You know he hates me and you know he’s going to do me in the moment he gets out, but I haven’t told you why.”

“Where is he now?” asked Leon.

“Devizes Gaol, he’s gone there for his discharge. He’ll be out in two months.”

“And then he’ll come straight to you, you think?”

She shook her head.

“Not he,” she said bitterly. “That ain’t his way. You don’t know him, Mr. Lucas. But nobody does know him like I do. If he’d come straight to me it’d be all right, but he’s not that kind. He’s going to kill me, I tell you, and I don’t care how soon it comes. He wasn’t called Bash Jones for nothing. I’ll get it all right!” she nodded grimly. “He’ll just walk into the room and bash me without a word and that’ll be the end of Amelia Jones. But I don’t mind, I don’t mind,” she repeated. “It’s the other that’s breaking my heart and has been all the time.”

He knew it was useless to try to persuade her to tell her troubles, and at closing time they left the bar together.

“I’d ask you home only that might make it worse, and I don’t want to get you into any kind of bother, Mr. Lucas,” she said.

He offered his hand. It was the first time he had done so, and she took it in her big limp palm and shook it feebly.

“Very few people have shaken hands with Amelia Jones,” thought Gonsalez, and he went back to the flat in Jermyn Street to find Manfred asleep before the fire.

He was waiting at Paddington Station the next morning in a suit a little less shabby, and to his surprise Mrs. Jones appeared dressed in better taste than he could have imagined was possible. Her clothes were plain but they effectively disguised the class to which she belonged. She took the tickets for Swindon and there was little conversation on the journey. Obviously she did not intend to unburden her mind as yet.

The train was held up at Newbury whilst a slow up-train shunted to allow a school special to pass. It was crowded with boys and girls who waved a cheery and promiscuous greeting as they passed.

“Of course!” nodded Leon. “It is the beginning of the Easter holidays. I had forgotten.”

At Swindon they alighted and then for the first time the woman gave some indication as to the object of their journey.

“We’ve got to stay on this platform,” she said nervously. “I’m expecting to see somebody, and I’d like you to see her, too, Mr. Lucas.”

Presently another special ran into the station and the majority of the passengers in this train also were children. Several alighted at the junction, apparently to change for some other destination than London, and Leon was talking to the woman, who he knew was not listening, when he saw her face light up. She left him with a little gasp and walked quickly along the platform to greet a tall, pretty girl wearing the crimson and white hat-ribbon of a famous West of England school.

“Why, Mrs. Jones, it is so kind of you to come down to see me. I wish you wouldn’t take so much trouble. I should be only too happy to come to London,” she laughed. “Is this a friend of yours?”

She shook hands with Leon, her eyes smiling her friendliness.

“It’s all right, Miss Grace,” said Mrs. Jones, agitated. “I just thought I’d pop down and have a look at you. How are you getting on at school, miss?”

“Oh, splendidly,” said the girl. “I’ve won a scholarship.”

“Isn’t that lovely!” said Mrs. Jones in an awestricken voice. “You always was wonderful, my dear.”

The girl turned to Leon.

“Mrs. Jones was my nurse, you know, years and years ago, weren’t you, Mrs. Jones?”

Amelia Jones nodded.

“How is your husband? Is he still unpleasant?”

“Oh, he ain’t so bad, miss,” said Mrs. Jones bravely. “He’s a little trying at times.”

“Do you know, I should like to meet him.”

“Oh no, you wouldn’t, miss,” gasped Amelia. “That’s only your kind heart. Where are you spending your holidays, miss?” she asked.

“With some friends of mine at Clifton, Molly Walker, Sir George Walker’s daughter.”

The eyes of Amelia Jones devoured the girl and Leon knew that all the love in her barren life was lavished upon this child she had nursed. They walked up and down the platform together and when her train came in Mrs. Jones stood at the carriage door until it drew out from the station and then waited motionless looking after the express until it melted in the distance.

“I’ll never see her again!” she muttered brokenly. “I’ll never see her again! Oh, my God!”

Her face was drawn and ghastly in its pallor and Leon took her arm.

“You must come and have some refreshment, Mrs. Jones. You are very fond of that young lady?”

“Fond of her?” She turned upon him. “Fond of her? She⁠—she is my daughter!”

They had a carriage to themselves going back to Town and Mrs. Jones told her story.

“Grace was three years old when her father got into trouble,” she said. “He had always been a brute and I think he’d been under the eyes of the police since he was a bit of a kid. I didn’t know this when I married him. I was nursemaid in a house that he’d burgled and I was discharged because I’d left the kitchen door ajar for him, not knowing that he was a thief. He did one long lagging and when he came out he swore he wouldn’t go back to prison again, and the next time if there was any danger of an alarm being raised, he would make it a case of murder. He and another man got into touch with a rich bookmaker on Blackheath. Bash used to do his dirty work for him, but they quarrelled and Bash and his pal burgled the house and got away with nearly nine thousand pounds.

“It was a big race day and Bash knew there’d be a lot of money in notes that had been taken on the racecourse and that couldn’t be traced. I thought he’d killed this man at first. It wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t. He walked into the room and bashed him as he lay in bed⁠—that was Bash’s way⁠—that’s how he got his name. He thought there’d be a lot of enquiries and gave me the money to look after. I had to put the notes into an old beer jar half full of sand, ram in the cork and cover the cork and the neck with candle-wax so that the water couldn’t get through, and then put it in the cistern which he could reach from one of the upstairs rooms at the back of the house. I was nearly mad with fear because I thought the gentleman had been killed, but I did as I was told and sunk the jar in the cistern. That night Bash and his mate were getting away to the north of England when they were arrested at Euston Station. Bash’s friend was killed, for he ran across the line in front of an engine, but they caught Bash and the house was searched from end to end. He got fifteen years’ penal servitude and he would have been out two years ago if he hadn’t been a bad character in prison.