The Council of Justice | Page 3

a conscience, he is enduring his hour,' he said.
The pair walked on in silence and turned into Oxford Street as the clock
of a church struck eight.
The tall man lifted his walking-stick and a sauntering taxi pulled up at

the curb.
'Aldgate,' he said, and the two men took their seats.
Not until the taxi was spinning along Newgate Street did either of the
men speak, and then the shorter asked:
'You are thinking about the woman?'
The other nodded and his companion relapsed into silence; then he
spoke again:
'She is a problem and a difficulty, in a way--yet she is the most
dangerous of the lot. And the curious thing about it is that if she were
not beautiful and young she would not be a problem at all. We're very
human, George. God made us illogical that the minor businesses of life
should not interfere with the great scheme. And the great scheme is that
animal men should select animal women for the mothers of their
children.'
'Venenum in auro bibitur,' the other quoted, which shows that he was
an extraordinary detective, 'and so far as I am concerned it matters little
to me whether an irresponsible homicide is a beautiful woman or a
misshapen negro.'
They dismissed the taxi at Aldgate Station and turned into Middlesex
Street.
The meeting-place of the great congress was a hall which was
originally erected by an enthusiastic Christian gentleman with a
weakness for the conversion of Jews to the New Presbyterian Church,
With this laudable object it had been opened with great pomp and the
singing of anthems and the enthusiastic proselytizer had spoken on that
occasion two hours and forty minutes by the clock.
After twelve months' labour the Christian gentleman discovered that
the advantages of Christianity only appeal to very rich Jews indeed, to
the Cohens who become Cowans, to the Isaacs who become Grahames,

and to the curious low-down Jews who stand in the same relation to
their brethren as White Kaffirs to a European community.
So the hall passed from hand to hand, and, failing to obtain a music and
dancing licence, went back to the mission-hall stage.
Successive generations of small boys had destroyed its windows and
beplastered its walls. Successive fly-posters had touched its blank face
with colour. Tonight there was nothing to suggest that there was any
business of extraordinary importance being transacted within its walls.
A Russian or a Yiddish or any kind of reunion does not greatly excite
Middlesex Street, and had little Peter boldly announced that the
congress of the Red Hundred were to meet in full session there would
have been no local excitement and--if the truth be told--he might still
have secured the services of his three policemen and commissionaire.
To this worthy, a neat, cleanly gentleman in uniform, wearing on his
breast the medals for the relief of Chitral and the Soudan Campaigns,
the two men delivered the perforated halves of their tickets and passed
through the outer lobby into a small room. By a door at the other end
stood a thin man with a straggling beard. His eyes were red-rimmed
and weak, he wore long narrow buttoned boots, and he had a trick of
pecking his head forwards and sideways like an inquisitive hen.
'You have the word, brothers?' he asked, speaking German like one
unaccustomed to the language.
The taller of the two strangers shot a swift glance at the sentinel that
absorbed the questioner from his cracked patent leather boots to his
flamboyant watch-chain. Then he answered in Italian:
'Nothing!'
The face of the guardian flushed with pleasure at the familiar tongue.
'Pass, brother; it is very good to hear that language.'
The air of the crowded hall struck the two men in the face like the blast

from a destructor. It was unclean; unhealthy--the scent of an
early-morning doss-house.
The hall was packed, the windows were closed and curtained, and as a
precautionary measure, little Peter had placed thick blankets before the
ventilators.
At one end of the hall was a platform on which stood a semicircle of
chairs and in the centre was a table draped with red. On the wall behind
the chairs--every one of which was occupied--was a huge red flag
bearing in the centre a great white 'C'. It had been tacked to the wall,
but one corner had broken away revealing a part of the painted scroll of
the mission workers:
'...are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.'
The two intruders pushed their way through a group that were gathered
at the door. Three aisles ran the length of the building, and they made
their way along the central gangway and found seats near the platform.
A brother was speaking. He was a good and zealous