The Law of the Four Just Men · The Man Who Was Happy (2/2)

Apparently her ladyship was in the habit of having little disagreements with her cook, for in the course of the conversation which followed he casually mentioned certain servants in his household who were no longer in his employ. He spoke mostly of their facial characteristics, and it seemed to Manfred, who was listening as intently as his companion, that his lordship was not a great authority upon the subject. He spoke haltingly, made several obvious slips, but Leon did not correct him. He mentioned casually that he had an additional interest in criminals because his own life had been threatened.

“Let us go up and join my lady,” he said after a long and blundering exposition of some phase of criminology which Manfred could have sworn he had read up for the occasion.

They went up the broad stairs into a little drawing-room on the first floor. It was empty. His lordship was evidently surprised.

“I wonder⁠—” he began, when the door opened and Lady Pertham ran in. Her face was white and her thin lips were trembling.

“Pertham,” she said rapidly, “I’m sure there’s a man in my dressing-room.”

“In your dressing-room?” said Lord Pertham, and ran out quickly.

The two men would have followed him, but he stopped halfway up the stairs and waved them back.

“You had better wait with her ladyship,” he said. “Ring for Thomas, my love,” he said.

Standing at the foot of the stairs they heard him moving about. Presently they heard a cry and the sound of a struggle. Manfred was halfway up the stairs when a door slammed above. Then came the sound of voices and a shot, followed by a heavy fall.

Manfred flung himself against the door from whence the sound came.

“It’s all right,” said Lord Pertham’s voice.

A second later he unlocked the door and opened it.

“I’m afraid I’ve killed this fellow.”

The smoking revolver was still in his hand. In the middle of the floor lay a poorly dressed man and his blood stained the pearl-grey carpet.

Gonsalez walked quickly to the body and turned it over. At the first sight he knew that the man was dead. He looked long and earnestly in his face, and Lord Pertham said:

“Do you know him?”

“I think so,” said Gonsalez quietly. “He is my colour-blind criminal,” for he had recognised the brother of Mrs. Prothero.

They walked home to their lodgings that night leaving Lord Pertham closeted with a detective-inspector, and Lady Pertham in hysterics.

Neither man spoke until they reached their flat, then Leon, with a sigh of content, curled up in the big armchair and pulled lovingly at an evil-smelling cigar.

“Leon!”

He took no notice.

“Leon!”

Leon shifted his head round and met George’s eye.

“Did anything about that shooting tonight strike you as peculiar?”

“Several things,” said Leon.

“Such as?”

“Such as the oddness of the fate that took Slippery Bill⁠—that was the name of my burglar⁠—to Lord Pertham’s house. It was not odd that he should commit the burglary, because he was a ladder larcenist, as you call him. By the way, did you look at the dead man’s hand?” he asked, twisting round and peering across the table at Manfred.

“No, I didn’t,” said the other in surprise.

“What a pity⁠—you would have thought it still more peculiar. What are the things you were thinking of?”

“I was wondering why Lord Pertham carried a revolver. He must have had it in his pocket at dinner.”

“That is easily explained,” said Gonsalez. “Don’t you remember his telling us that his life had been threatened in anonymous letters?”

Manfred nodded.

“I had forgotten that,” he said. “But who locked the door?”

“The burglar, of course,” said Leon and smiled. And by that smile Manfred knew that he was prevaricating. “And talking of locked doors⁠—”

He went into his room and returned with two little instruments that looked like the gongs of electric bells, except that there was a prong sticking up from each.

He locked the sitting-room door and placed one of these articles on the floor, sticking the spike into the bottom of the door so that it was impossible to open without exercising pressure upon the bell. He tried it and there was a shrill peal.

“That’s all right,” he said, and turned to examine the windows.

“Are you expecting burglars?”

“I am rather,” said Leon, “and really I cannot afford to lose my sleep.”

Not satisfied with the fastening of the window he pushed in a little wedge, and performed the same office to the second of the windows looking upon the street.

Another door, leading to Manfred’s room from the passage without, he treated as he had served the first.

In the middle of the night there was a frantic ring from one of the bells. Manfred leapt out of bed and switched on the light. His own door was fast and he raced into the sitting-room, but Gonsalez was there before him examining the little sentinel by the door. The door had been unlocked. He kicked away the alarm with his slippered foot.

“Come in, Lord Pertham,” he said. “Let’s talk this matter over.”

There was a momentary silence, then the sound of a slippered foot, and a man came in. He was fully dressed and hatless, and Manfred, seeing the bald head, gasped.

“Sit down and make yourself at home, and let me relieve you of that lethal weapon you have in your pocket, because this matter can be arranged very amicably,” said Leon.

It was undoubtedly Lord Pertham, though the great mop of hair had vanished, and Manfred could only stare as Leon’s left hand slipped into the pocket of the midnight visitor and drew forth a revolver which he placed carefully on the mantelshelf.

Lord Pertham sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. For a while the silence was unbroken.

“You may remember the Honourable George Fearnside,” began Leon, and Manfred started.

“Fearnside? Why, he was on the Prince’s yacht⁠—”

“He was on the Prince’s yacht,” agreed Gonsalez, “and we thoroughly believed that he did not associate us with escaping malefactors, but apparently he knew us for the Four Just Men. You came into your title about six years ago, didn’t you, Pertham?”

The bowed figure nodded. Presently he sat up⁠—his face was white and there were black circles about his eyes.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “it seems that instead of getting you, you have got me. Now what are you going to do?”

Gonsalez laughed softly.

“For myself,” he said, “I am certainly not going in the witness-box to testify that Lord Pertham is a bigamist and for many years has been leading a double life. Because that would mean I should also have to admit certain uncomfortable things about myself.”

The man licked his lips and then:

“I came to kill you,” he said thickly.

“So we gather,” said Manfred. “What is this story, Leon?”

“Perhaps his lordship will tell us,” said Gonsalez.

Lord Pertham looked round for something.

“I want a glass of water,” he said, and it was Leon who brought it.

“It is perfectly true,” said Lord Pertham after a while. “I recognised you fellows as two of the Four Just Men. I used to be a great friend of His Highness, and it was by accident that I was on board the yacht when you were taken off. His Highness told me a yarn about some escapade, but when I got to Spain and read the newspaper account of the escape I was pretty certain that I knew who you were. You probably know something about my early life, how I went before the mast as a common sailor and travelled all over the world. It was the kind of life which satisfied me more than any, other, for I got to know people and places and to know them from an angle which I should never have understood in any other way. If you ever want to see the world, travel in the fo’c’sle,” he said with a half-smile.

“I met Martha Grey one night in the East End of London at a theatre. When I was a seaman I acted like a seaman. My father and I were not on the best of terms and I never wanted to go home. She sat by my side in the pit of the theatre and ridiculous as it may seem to you I fell in love with her.”

“You were then married?” said Leon, but the man shook his head.

“No,” he said quickly. “Like a fool I was persuaded to marry her ladyship about three months later, after I had got sick of the sea and had come back to my own people. She was an heiress and it was a good match for me. That was before my father had inherited his cousin’s money. My life with her ladyship was a hell upon earth. You saw her tonight and you can guess the kind of woman she is. I have too great a respect for women and live too much in awe of them to exercise any control over her viperish temper and it was the miserable life I lived with her which drove me to seek out Martha.

“Martha is a good girl,” he said, and there was a glitter in his eye as he challenged denial. “The purest, the dearest, the sweetest woman that ever lived. It was when I met her again that I realised how deeply in love I was, and as with a girl of her character there was no other way⁠—I married her.

“I had fever when I was on a voyage to Australia and lost all my hair. That was long before I met Martha. I suppose it was vanity on my part, but when I went back to my own life and my own people, as I did for a time after that, I had a wig made which served the double purpose of concealing my infirmity and preventing my being recognised by my former shipmates.

“As the little hair I had had gone grey I had the wig greyed too, had it made large and poetical⁠—” he smiled sadly, “to make my disguise more complete. Martha didn’t mind my bald head. God bless her!” he said softly, “and my life with her has been a complete and unbroken period of happiness. I have to leave her at times to manage my own affairs and in those times I pretend to be at sea, just as I used to pretend to her ladyship that business affairs called me to America to explain my absence from her.”

“The man you shot was Martha’s half-brother, of course,” said Gonsalez, and Lord Pertham nodded.

“It was just ill luck which brought him to my house,” he said, “sheer bad luck. In the struggle my wig came off, he recognised me and I shot him,” he said simply. “I shot him deliberately and in cold blood, not only because he threatened to wreck my happiness, but because for years he has terrorised his sister and has been living on her poor earnings.”

Gonsalez nodded.

“I saw grey hair in his hands and I guessed what had happened,” he said.

“Now what are you going to do?” asked the Earl of Pertham.

Leon was smoking now.

“What are you going to do?” he asked in retort. “Perhaps you would like me to tell you?”

“I should,” said the man earnestly.

“You are going to take your bigamous wife abroad just as soon as this inquest is over, and you are going to wait a reasonable time and then persuade your wife to get a divorce. After which you will marry your Mrs. Prothero in your own name,” said Gonsalez.

“Leon,” said Manfred after Fearnside had gone back to the room above, the room he had taken in the hope of discovering how much Gonsalez knew, “I think you are a thoroughly unmoral person. Suppose Lady Pertham does not divorce his lordship?”

Leon laughed.

“There is really no need for her to divorce Lord Pertham,” he said, “for his lordship told us a little lie. He married his Martha first, deserted her and went back to her. I happen to know this because I have already examined both registers, and I know there was a Mrs. Prothero before there was a Lady Pertham.”

“You’re a wonderful fellow, Leon,” said Manfred admiringly.

“I am,” admitted Leon Gonsalez.