The four just men Author:Edgar Wallace Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE FAITHFUL COMMONS Somebody — was it Mr. Gladstone? — placed it on record that there is nothing quite so dangerous, quite so ferocious, quite... more » 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 dis- balancement. 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 laughat death — and live in terror of personal embarrassment. Coroners' 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 y...« less