Four Just Men | Page 8

was the reply.
The Premier, with a troubled face, paced the floor of his private room.
He stopped once to look moodily through the window that gave a view
of a crowded terrace and a mass of excited politicians gesticulating and
evidently all speaking at once.
"Very, very serious--very, very serious," he muttered. Then aloud, "We
said so much we might as well continue. Give the newspapers as full an
account of this afternoon's happenings as they think necessary--give
them the text of the letter." He pushed a button and his secretary
entered noiselessly.
"Write to the Commissioner telling him to offer a reward of a thousand
pounds for the arrest of the man who left this thing and a free pardon
and the reward to any accomplice."
The Secretary withdrew and the Scotland Yard expert waited.
"Have your people found how the machine was introduced?"
"No, sir; the police have all been relieved and been subjected to
separate interrogation. They remember seeing no stranger either
entering or leaving the House."
The Premier pursed his lips in thought.
"Thank you," he said simply, and the expert withdrew.
On the terrace Aldgate East and the oratorical member divided honours.
"I must have been standing quite close to it," said the latter
impressively; " 'pon my word it makes me go cold all over to think

about it. You remember, Mellin? I was saying about the duty of the
Ministry----"
"I asked the waiter," said the member for Aldgate to an interested circle,
"when he brought the letter: 'Where did you find it?'
"On the floor, sir!" he said. "I thought it was a medicine advertisement;
I wasn't going to open it, only somebody----"
"It was me," claimed the stout gentleman from Brondesbury proudly;
"you remember I was saying----''
"I knew it was somebody," continued Aldgate East graciously. "I
opened it and read the first few lines. 'Bless my soul,' I said----"
"You said, 'Well, I'm damned,'" corrected Brondesbury.
"Well, I know it was something very much to the point," admitted
Aldgate East. "I read it--and, you'll quite understand, I couldn't grasp its
significance, so to speak. Well----"
The three stalls reserved at the Star Music Hall in Oxford Street were
occupied one by one. At half past seven prompt came Manfred, dressed
quietly; at eight came Poiccart, a fairly prosperous middle-aged
gentleman; at half past eight came Gonsalez, asking in perfect English
for a programme. He seated himself between the two others.
When pit and gallery were roaring themselves hoarse over a patriotic
song, Manfred smilingly turned to Leon, and said :
"I saw it in the evening papers."
Leon nodded quickly.
"There was nearly trouble," he said quietly. "As I went in somebody
said, 'I thought Bascoe had paired,' and one of them almost came up to
me and spoke."

CHAPTER III.
ONE THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD
To say that England was stirred to its depths--to quote more than one
leading article on the subject--by the extraordinary occurrence in the
House of Commons, would be stating the matter exactly.
The first intimation of the existence of the Four Just Men had been
received with pardonable derision, particularly by those newspapers
that were behindhand with the first news. Only the Daily Megaphone
had truly and earnestly recognised how real was the danger which
threatened the Minister in charge of the obnoxious Act. Now, however,
even the most scornful could not ignore the significance of the
communication that had so mysteriously found its way into the very
heart of Britain's most jealously guarded institution. The story of the
Bomb Outrage filled the pages of every newspaper throughout the
country, and the latest daring venture of the Four was placarded the
length and breadth of the Isles.
Stories, mostly apocryphal, of the men who were responsible for the
newest sensation made their appearance from day to day, and there was
no other topic in the mouths of men wherever they met but the strange
quartet who seemed to hold the lives of the mighty in the hollows of
their hands.
Never since the days of the Fenian outrages had the mind of the public
been so filled with apprehension as it was during the two days
following the appearance in the Commons of the 'blank bomb', as one
journal felicitously described it.
Perhaps in exactly the same kind of apprehension, since there was a
general belief, which grew out of the trend of the letters, that the Four
menaced none other than one man.
The first intimation of their intentions had excited widespread interest.

But the fact that the threat had been launched from a small French town,
and that in consequence the danger was very remote, had somehow
robbed the threat of some of its force. Such was the vague reasoning of
an ungeographical people that