The Woman of Gratz

Prelude

Dear Reader ... 

 This story is based on the characters from the 'Four Just Men' series by Edgar Wallace (1875-1932). Based in England in the first quarter of the twentieth century, the Just Men attempt to impose justice where the law has failed.  

Writer of thrillers, detective fiction, humorous short stories and adventure, Edgar Wallace was one of the most popular English writers of the 1920s. He published the first of his stories about the 'Four Just Men' in 1906, and the book was such a best seller that he carried on writing about them. Two of Wallace's stories about the Just Men, the original book The Four Just Men and a novella called 'The Poisoners', were stories without an ending, and readers were challenged to supply the end of the story. Wallace's final full-length novel about the Four Just Men, titled The Three Just Men (1924), does have a final chapter, but the story is not complete. I wrote a short story entitled The Flat at Doughty Court in an attempt to complete the novel and explain what happened after Leon rescued Mirabelle and drove away with her at the end of the book, leaving Raymond and George to walk home. I suggested that, after all their adventures and saving each other's lives, Mirabelle and Leon would have got married. 

In a second story, The Girl from Heavytree Farm, I continued the story of Mirabelle after her marriage to Leon, and her adventures as the fourth person in the Three Just Men's organisation. In Edgar Wallace's novels the Just Men's adventures involved international anarchist movements (The Council of Justice), corrupt financiers (The Just Men of Cordova) or international arms-dealers (The Three Just Men), but his collections of short stories (The Law of the Four Just Men, and Again the Three), centred on less important people: a man and wife trying to protect each other from a blackmailer, a violent husband, a kidnapper. In The Girl from Heavytree Farm they were also working close to home, against murderers, sweatshops and corrupt city council contractors. 

In this present story, I return to Edgar Wallace's second 'Four Just Men' novel, The Council of Justice (1908). In that story, Wallace pitted his heroes against the anarchist organisation the Red Hundred, led by the peasant girl turned revolutionary Maria of Gratz. Wallace's story ends when George Manfred is rescued from prison by his two colleagues and escapes from England. But what became of Maria, who almost brought about his downfall? The scenes between her and George are tantalisingly suggestive of a great romance - but that great romance never takes place. What would happen if it did? 

This story is set in October 1924, the year that the book The Three Just Men was first published, sixteen years after the events in The Council of Justice. It is sixteen years since George and Maria last met ... and now Maria has returned to England ... 

 Helen Lerewth, November 2013 

helenlerewth@gmail.com 

Contents 

 Dear Reader ... 

Prelude

Chapter one 

Chapter two  

Chapter three

Chapter four  

Chapter five

Chapter six  

Prelude 

 At 233 Curzon Street, all was quiet. The maids had finished cleaning and had retired to the kitchen, where George Manfred could hear them chatting to the cook. They would be leaving soon for the day. Raymond Poiccart was in the laboratory, testing onions. He was still experimenting with growing larger food plants, convinced it was a solution to the world food shortage. Leon Gonsalez and his wife Mirabelle Leicester were out, tying up a corruption case at the City Council. 

George was alone. 

His mind ran back many years, to an evening he had been alone - when Leon and Raymond had departed overseas, and he was sitting in his house in Lewisham, resting, waiting - for what? As it turned out, for the Woman of Gratz to come and tell him that she had betrayed him. And then there was arrest, and trial, and his closest ever brush with death. 

She had spoken that evening of love, and had pleaded with him to kill her, because it would be just to kill her if by killing her he could save her soul. The request was emotional, irrational, unbalanced, as everything about her was emotional, irrational and unbalanced; and he had refused. He had told her that they were strangely placed to talk of love; that she must not think of him. He had blessed her and kissed her, and told her 'who knows how bright are the days in store for us both?' as the police took him away. 

She had not left him; she had remained, mourning, outside his prison, and had followed him until Leon had spoken to her - on his request - had given her money so that she could go to the continent, and had sent her away. 

Then he had escaped, and she had gone, and they had never spoken again. 

He remembered her face as he had spoken to her last: 'how bright are the days in store for us both?' - He had meant the words as a farewell, and she had taken them as a promise of the future. 

The doorbell rang. He rose to answer it. 

A tall, slim woman with long dark hair stood on the doorstep; he didn't recognise her. Then she raised tragic dark eyes to his own, and he did. 

'Good evening, George,' said Maria of Gratz.