Four Just Men | Page 5

of
a particularly offensive type. Three convictions under the Factory Act.
Believed by the police there was a further and more intimate cause for
the murder not unconnected with Cutler's treatment of women
employees.)
Liege,February 28,1900.-- Jacques Ellerman, prefect: shot dead
returning from the Opera House. Ellerman was a notorious evil liver,
and upon investigating his affairs after his death it was found that he
had embezzled nearly a quarter of a million francs of the public funds.

Seattle(Kentucky), October, 1900.--Judge Anderson. Found dead in his
room, strangled. Anderson had thrice been tried for his life on charges
of murder. He was the leader of the Anderson faction in the
Anderson-Hara feud. Had killed in all seven of the Hara clan, was three
times indicted and three times released on a verdict of Not Guilty. It
will be remembered that on the last occasion, when charged with the
treacherous murder of the Editor of the Seattle Star, he shook hands
with the packed jury and congratulated them.
New York,October 30, 1900.--Patrick Welch, a notorious grafter and
stealer of public moneys. Sometime City Treasurer; moving spirit in
the infamous Street Paving Syndicate; exposed by the New York
Journal. Welch was found hanging in a little wood on Long Island.
Believed at the time to have been suicide.
Paris,March 4, 1901.--Madame Despard. Asphyxiated. This also was
regarded as suicide till certain information came to hands of French
police. Of Madame Despard nothing good can be said. She was a
notorious 'dealer in souls'.
Paris,March 4, 1902 (exactly a year later).--Monsieur Gabriel Lanfin,
Minister of Communication. Found shot in his brougham in the Bois de
Boulogne. His coachman was arrested but eventually discharged. The
man swore he heard no shot or cry from his master. It was raining at the
time, and there were few pedestrians in the Bois.
(Here followed ten other cases, all on a par with those quoted above,
including the cases of Trelovitch and le Blois.)
It was undoubtedly a great story.
The Editor-in-Chief, seated in his office, read it over again and said,
"Very good indeed."
The reporter--whose name was Smith--read it over and grew pleasantly
warm at the consequences of his achievement.
The Foreign Secretary read it in bed as he sipped his morning tea, and

frowningly wondered if he had said too much.
The chief of the French police read it--translated and telegraphed--in Le
Temps, and furiously cursed the talkative Englishman who was
upsetting his plans.
In Madrid, at the Cafe de la Paix, in the Place of the Sun, Manfred,
cynical, smiling, and sarcastic, read extracts to three men--two
pleasantly amused, the other heavy-jowled and pasty of face, with the
fear of death in his eyes.


CHAPTER II.
THE FAITHFUL COMMONS
Somebody--was it Mr Gladstone?--placed it on record that there is
nothing quite so dangerous, quite so ferocious, quite so terrifying as a
mad sheep. Similarly, as we know, there is no person quite so
indiscreet, quite so foolishly talkative, quite so amazingly gauche, as
the diplomat who for some reason or other has run off the rails.
There comes a moment to the man who has trained himself to guard his
tongue in the Councils of Nations, who has been schooled to walk
warily amongst pitfalls digged cunningly by friendly Powers, when the
practice and precept of many years are forgotten, and he behaves
humanly. Why this should be has never been discovered by ordinary
people, although the psychological minority who can generally explain
the mental processes of their fellows, have doubtless very adequate and
convincing reasons for these acts of disbalancement.
Sir Philip Ramon was a man of peculiar temperament.
I doubt whether anything in the wide world would have arrested his
purpose once his mind had been made up. He was a man of strong

character, a firm, square-jawed, big-mouthed man, with that shade of
blue in his eyes that one looks for in peculiarly heartless criminals, and
particularly famous generals. And yet Sir Philip Ramon feared, as few
men imagined he feared, the consequence of the task he had set
himself.
There are thousands of men who are physically heroes and morally
poltroons, men who would laugh at death-- and live in terror of
personal embarrassments. Coroner's courts listen daily to the tale of
such men's lives--and deaths.
The Foreign Secretary reversed these qualities. Good animal men
would unhesitatingly describe the Minister as a coward, for he feared
pain and he feared death.
"If this thing is worrying you so much," the Premier said kindly--it was
at the Cabinet Council two days following the publication of the
Megaphone's story--"why don't you drop the Bill? After all, there are
matters of greater importance to occupy the time of the House, and we
are getting near the end of the session."
An approving murmur