The Complete Four Just Men Read Free

Street and find a single triangle affixed to the sedate door which marks their professional headquarters . . . The hunted and reviled have become a most exclusive detective agency . . . We can only hope that their somewhat drastic methods of other times have been considerably modified.
    Certainly these stories are more conventional in their scope. A client calls for help and they supply it, solving the mystery and handing out justice. The tales are entertaining and even amusing at times rather than thrilling.
    No doubt there would have been more stories, more problems for the Just Men to tackle if Wallace had not died of diabetes in 1932. Nevertheless six books is quite a legacy for the Just Men, who have been unfairly neglected over the years. Here are all their yarns, scrapes, plots and thrilling exploits collected together for your entertainment. Of course we would regard some of the attitudes and characterisations as presented in the stories as politically incorrect these days, but they do accurately reflect the times in which they were written.
    There have been two film versions, in 1921 and 1939, both loosely based on the first novel; and a TV series in 1959 which used the title and the basic idea of vigilante crimefighters but little else from Wallace’s work. But for the real McCoy, you must read the stories – and here they all are ready and waiting to thrill you.
    D av i d Stuart D a v i es

The F ou r Ju s t M e n

Prologue
    Thery’s trade
    If you leave the Plaza del Mina, go down the narrow street, where, from ten till four, the big flag of the United States Consulate hangs lazily; through the square on which the Hôtel de la France fronts, round by the Church of Our Lady, and along the clean, narrow thoroughfare that is the High Street of Cadiz, you will come to the Café of the Nations.
    At five o’clock there will be few people in the broad, pillared saloon, and usually the little round tables that obstruct the sidewalk before its doors are untenanted.
    In the late summer (in the year of the famine) four men sat about one table and talked business.
    Leon Gonsalez was one, Poiccart was another, George Manfred was a notable third, and one, Thery, or Saimont, was the fourth. Of this quartet, only Thery requires no introduction to the student of contemporary history. In the Bureau of Public Affairs you will find his record. As Thery, alias Saimont, he is registered.
    You may, if you are inquisitive, and have the necessary permission, inspect his photograph taken in eighteen positions – with his hands across his broad chest, full faced, with a three-days’ growth of beard, profile, with – but why enumerate the whole eighteen?
    There are also photographs of his ears – and very ugly, bat-shaped ears they are – and a long and comprehensive story of his life.
    Signor Paolo Mantegazza, Director of the National Museum of Anthropology, Florence, has done Thery the honour of including him in his admirable work (see chapter on ‘Intellectual Value of a Face’); hence I say that to all students of criminology and physiognomy, Thery must need no introduction.
    He sat at a little table, this man, obviously ill at ease, pinching his fat cheeks, smoothing his shaggy eyebrows, fingering the white scar on his unshaven chin, doing all the things that the lower classes do when they suddenly find themselves placed on terms of equality with their betters.
    For although Gonsalez, with the light blue eyes and the restless hands, and Poiccart, heavy, saturnine, and suspicious, and George Manfred, with his grey-shot beard and single eyeglass, were less famous in the criminal world, each was a great man, as you shall learn.
    Manfred laid down the Heraldo di Madrid , removed his eyeglass, rubbed it with a spotless handkerchief, and laughed quietly.
    ‘These Russians are droll,’ he commented.
    Poiccart frowned and reached for the newspaper. ‘Who is it – this time?’
    ‘A governor of one of the Southern