The Four just Men by Edgar Wallace

Blood-red placards, hoarse newsboys, overwhelming headlines, and column after column of leaded type told the world next day how near the Four had been to capture. Men in the train leaned forward, their newspapers on their knees, and explained what they would have done had they been in the editor of the Megaphone's position. People stopped talking about wars and famines and droughts and street accidents and parliaments and ordinary everyday murders in order to concentrate their minds upon the topic of the hour. Would the Four Just Men carry out their promise and slay the secretary for foreign affairs on the morrow? Nothing else was spoken about. Here was a murder threatened a month ago, and, unless something unforeseen happened, to be committed tomorrow. No wonder that the London press devoted the greater part of its space to discuss the coming of Thery and his recapture.

". It is not so easy to understand," said the Telegram, "why, having the miscreants in their hands, certain journalists connected with a sensational and halfpenny contemporary allowed them to go free to work their evil designs upon a great statesman whose unparalleled. We say ‘if,' for, unfortunately, in these days of cheap journalism every story emanating from the sanctum sanctorum of sensation-loving sheets is not to be accepted on its pretensions; so if, as it is stated, these desperadoes really did visit the office of a contemporary last night."