Not bad, no, quite a good book if you think when it was written, more than a hundred years ago, in 1908, but not really to my taste. I found it quite boring.
We meet again the three ‘just men’: Manfred, Leon Gonzales and Poiccart, and in this book a fourth asks to join them, which if I’m not mistaken is the Prince of somewhere in Spain… although it’s not too clear in my mind how he could be part of an anarchist group without anyone knowing he was royalty… and yet, it was so long ago, it’s not like there were gossip magazines with his face everywhere, so maybe nobody really knew his face…
Anyway, the book starts with the Red Hundred, a group of anarchist, having a big meeting in London. Not at all hiding, there’s freedom of speech after all.
They were dangerous people, planning assassinations and acts of terrorism to take out those they called ‘tyrants’, the people in charge of the various countries. Two of the Four get in there to keep an eye on things, having already threatened many of them to stop their plans, but unfortunately the police learn they are there and want to find them.
Nobody knows who is part of the Four Just Men, so they get away because a man in there vouches for them being not part of the Four but of the Red Hundred… it was the Prince, who then asks them to join them, and he will, for like six months or so.
The Red Hundred plan various attacks on people of importance (…) but the Four stop them all.
The Four enlists the help of a Red, more or less by blackmail, to act as a spy for them, but he gets killed while he tries to convince a woman to escape with him.
The Woman is deeply invested in the Red Hundred, and has no intention of escaping with him. Two men of the Red H. kill him, but then they are killed by Jessen - I did not know at first it was him, since I didn’t know what his job was or how he was involved, but later on we will learn he is now an executioner so this one was not a murder, but an execution.
Manfred is there too, and makes a really big impression on the Woman, who becomes obsessed by him.
With those men dead, the Woman is now in charge of the Red Hundred, and she wants to kill the Prince because he is planning his wedding, a very public one, but two of the Four stop the paid killers sent to commit the murder and take them prisoner, and bring them both to an isolated home that they had built very very recently just for this; their doing also, of course, is the Woman knowing about it and following them there, and also the Prince and some judge or something, and also other two members of the Red.
For some reason not really clear to me, those two men and the Woman are let go… the prisoners are left in the house with a bomb, and it’s the Woman herself who pushes the button (or was it a level or something?) to kill them, to show them her determination.
It sure impresses them by showing how much power the Four have, but if the Four thought that this would stop the Red they were mistaken. In London, it’s the start of a few days of terror. Now the Red targets the house of normal people to inspire terror in the population, and also bridges and boat and whatever target they like.
Then a terrorist, one of the bombers, if found hanged, with a note left by the Four. Then a second.
The third is also followed by a policeman, Falmouth, who almost caught him but a fake policeman was the one who stopped him and also stabbed him without Falmouth noticing anything.
The Red Hundred catch Jessen, believing him one of the Four, and want to judge and execute him, but after knowing who he really is, they let him go…
again, I didn’t understand why. Why did they let him go?
At this point I don’t know if my book was missing a few pages or what, because suddenly the Woman goes to Falmouth telling him who and where Manfred was… how did SHE know who and where he was??? When did she find that out? She didn’t know before.
Now, she goes to visit him at home, but after talking to him she realise that she had not understood the nature of her obsession, probably because she never had a crush before. She does not feel hate at all towards him, she now tells him that she loves him and is sorry that she called the police. Nonetheless, the police arrive and Manfred doesn’t even try to escape.
He is taken in, there’s a whole trial - not really on the events of this book though, but mostly regarding the man they killed in the first book, when they killed a politician because he was resolute on a law that would have disrupted some international situation or something, if I remember right, and so he has little or nothing on his defence. He doesn’t even try, and lets the trial go on till the end. He is found guilty, of course, because he did do it and the jury is not there to discuss his morals, so he is sentenced to death. He will soon be hanged, and yet he is not at all worried, feeling totally calm and sure that his friends will help him escape.
It all went on for weeks (since he was captured till the sentence), and in that time Leon and Poiccart made many things - one of them was to write a book on Marocco as a way to send him a message, then they bought a home near the prison and made many things, the last of which was to dig a tunnel that went from the house to the place of execution, so that when the moment comes Manfred steps on the trap door (before having the rope on his neck of course) and from there he is taken by his friends to safety.
Of course the guards act as quickly as possible but first it was smoke in the tunnel and then a heavy, bolted door that slowed them down. The guards arranged to follow them as quickly as possible, but various things make them lose those few minutes most important.
The Three escape in a car, heading to the sea.
When the guards arrive, they are told that three men left on a fast boat.
Seeing a big yacht leaving, they ask whose is that and are told that it is the Prince’s, so they stop, thinking that surely he would not help them escape…
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