Four Just Men Read Online Free PDF

itself was all a-twitter with pleasurable excitement. Here was great news indeed: news that might be heralded across double columns, blared forth in headlines, shouted by placards, illustrated, diagramised, and illuminated by statistics.
    "Is it the Mafia?" asked the Comet noisily, and went on to prove that it was.
    The Evening World, with its editorial mind lingering lovingly in the 'sixties, mildly suggested a vendetta, and instanced 'The Corsican Brothers'.
    The Megaphone stuck to the story of the Four Just Men, and printed pages of details concerning their nefarious acts. It disinterred from dusty files, continental and American, the full circumstances of each murder; it gave the portraits and careers of the men who were slain, and, whilst in no way palliating the offence of the Four, yet set forth justly and dispassionately the lives of the victims, showing the sort of men they were.
    It accepted warily the reams of contributions that flowed into the office; for a newspaper that has received the stigma 'yellow' exercises more caution than its more sober competitors. In newspaper-land a dull lie is seldom detected, but an interesting exaggeration drives an unimaginative rival to hysterical denunciations.
    And reams of Four Men anecdotes did flow in. For suddenly, as if by magic, every outside contributor, every literary gentleman who made a speciality of personal notes, every kind of man who wrote, discovered that he had known the Four intimately all his life.
    'When I was in Italy . . .' wrote the author of Come Again (Hackworth Press, 6s.: 'slightly soiled', Farring-don Book Mart, 2 d.) 'I remember I heard a curious story about these Men of Blood. . . .'
    Or--
    'No spot in London is more likely to prove the hiding-place of the Four Villains than Tidal Basin,' wrote another gentleman, who stuck Collins in the north-east corner of his manuscript. 'Tidal Basin in the reign of Charles II was known as ...'
    "Who's Collins?" asked the super-chief of the Megaphone of his hard-worked editor.
    "A liner," described the editor wearily, thereby revealing that even the newer journalism had not driven the promiscuous contributor from his hard-fought field; "he does police-courts, fires, inquests, and things. Lately he'; taken to literature and writes Picturesque-Bits-of-Old London and Famous Tombstones-of-Hornsey epics. .. .'
    Throughout the offices of the newspapers the same thing was happening. Every cable that arrived, ever; piece of information that reached the sub-editor's basket was coloured with the impending tragedy uppermost ii men's minds. Even the police-court reports contained some allusion to the Four. It was the overnight drunk an disorderly's justification for his indiscretion.
    "The lad has always been honest," said the boy's tearful mother; "it's reading these horrible stories about the Four Foreigners that's made him turn out like this"; and the magistrate took a lenient view o the offence.
    To all outward showing, Sir Philip Ramon, the man mostly interested in the development of the plot, was the least concerned.
    He refused to be interviewed any further; he declined to discuss the possibilities of assassination, even with the Premier, and his answer to letters of appreciation that came to him from all parts of the country was an announcement in the Morning Post asking his correspondents to be good enough to refrain from persecuting him with picture postcards, which found no other repository than his wastepaper basket.
    He had thought of adding an announcement of his intention of carrying the Bill through Parliament at whatever cost, and was only deterred by the fear of theatricality.
    To Falmouth, upon whom had naturally devolved the duty of protecting the Foreign Secretary from harm, Sir Philip was unusually gracious, and incidentally permitted that astute officer to get a glimpse of the terror in which a threatened man lives.
    "Do you think there's any danger, Superintendent?" he asked, not once but a score of