Character guide

Sir Philip Ramon

major

Also known as Ramon, old Ramon

Sir Philip Ramon is the Minister of the Crown whose extradition measure has drawn the Four Just Men's ultimatum, and he meets it not with panic but with a cold, resentful resolve to carry the bill through and vindicate the integrity of his office. A man with neither wife nor child, he has made provision for his servants as though he already counts himself dead, and his own creed—that a minister 'ceases to exist as a man and becomes merely an unhuman automaton'—reads like a verdict on himself. His stubborn, unlovable honesty is what turns the book's central standoff into a genuine contest of wills rather than a simple manhunt.

Billy Marks

major

Also known as Bill, William, Mr. Billy Marks, Marks

Billy Marks works the trams and crowds of a London gripped by Four Just Men fever, lifting purses and watches with practiced ease until a detective named Falmouth catches his arm and turns him informer. Caught between the menace of a returned convict he once betrayed and the pressure of the police, Billy discovers that what he glimpsed in a stolen moment might be worth more than any purse. His petty cunning and shifting loyalties make him the story's street-level hinge—the small, self-interested witness through whom the vast machinery of the hunt first begins to turn.

Miguel Thery

major

Also known as Thery, one Thery

Thery is the one member of the quartet whose record the police can actually read: a thickset Spaniard from Jerez, aliases Saimont and Le Chico, a white scar on his cheek and an old knife wound on his body, circulated in a reward notice that sends cables humming from Madrid to London. Ill at ease among his cultivated companions at the Café of the Nations, he pinches his cheeks and fingers his scar like a man who knows he is the weak link. Because he is the only one the authorities can name, he becomes the pressure point of the investigation—and the measure of how close the hunters are getting to the rest.

George Manfred

major

Also known as Manfred

Manfred is the mind of the Four Just Men—cultivated, ironic, at ease in evening dress and expensive restaurants while orchestrating a killing that has all London talking. He can quote Brutus and De Quincey in defense of his cause, yet the comparison to the East-End murders genuinely distresses him, exposing a conscience he would rather not examine. His blend of fastidious intelligence and uneasy moral self-justification gives the conspiracy its voice, and makes the reader weigh the justice of the Four Just Men's mission rather than simply condemn it.

Poiccart

major

Also known as Señor Poiccart, Señor

Poiccart moves through the plot with the serenity of a man who has already made peace with his conscience, wearing the silken button of the Legion d'Honneur while calmly discussing murder as an instrument of justice. When a pickpocket lifts his watch and, far worse, the pocketbook containing his notes for Thery, his composure barely cracks—but the loss turns a routine operation into a race against the police. His methodical calm and the incriminating notebook he carries make him both the steadiest and the most vulnerable of the four, and the theft sets the middle of the book in motion.

Leon Gonsalez

major

Also known as Gonsalez, Señor Gonsalez

Gonsalez is the quartet's volatile artist—his hands never still, his speech tumbling out in breathless self-defense whenever the conversation turns to the Barcelona bomb he reluctantly enabled. He argues for clean, almost courteous methods of execution, demonstrating on an imaginary oppressor how a petition might be presented with the right hand and the knife with the left. His theatrical flair and guilty conscience make him the most human and unpredictable of the Four Just Men, and his chemistry and disguises are the practical engine behind their most audacious plans.

Detective Superintendent Falmouth

major

Also known as Falmouth, Superintendent Falmouth, Mr. Falmouth

Falmouth commands the official investigation into the Four Just Men, coordinating cable traffic across Europe and deploying men to protect Sir Philip Ramon. His authority is constantly undercut by the killers' uncanny ability to anticipate every police move, turning each failure into a public embarrassment. He embodies the era's faith in professional detection, and his struggle to close the net on the Four defines the novel's central cat-and-mouse tension.

Mr. Howard

supporting

Also known as Howard, Mister Howard

Howard moves between Fleet Street and the police, trading information with Falmouth and watching the official manhunt with a journalist's skeptical eye. His access to the editor's inner circle puts him near the strangest evidence in the case, including letters that seem to appear from thin air. He matters because his wry, grounded perspective keeps the reader oriented as the Four Just Men's methods grow more theatrical and the authorities more desperate.

Welby

supporting

Welby works the case alongside Falmouth and the newspaper editor, bringing Holmesian enthusiasm to crime scenes where the real clues refuse to cooperate. He is earnest, slightly defensive about his reading habits, and painfully aware that the department has already been embarrassed by the Four. His dogged, sometimes comic diligence shows how ordinary police work fares against adversaries who seem to have stepped out of fiction.

Judge Anderson

minor

Also known as Anderson

The judge presiding over the legal proceedings related to the case.

Harry Moss

minor

A criminal associate of Billy Marks.

Detective Jackson

minor

Also known as Jackson

A detective working under Falmouth.

Constable Howard

minor

Also known as Howard

A uniformed policeman involved in the investigation.

Sir Francis Katling

minor

A government official involved in the extradition matter.

Old Bascoe

minor

Also known as Bascoe, Mr. Bascoe

An elderly man who provides information to the police.

Hermann le Blois

minor

Also known as le Blois

A foreign agent involved in the conspiracy.

Ellerman

minor

A police constable who guards Sir Philip Ramon.

Perks

minor

A prison warder at the jail where Thery is held.

Pinkerton

minor

A detective from the Pinkerton agency assisting the police.

Garcia

minor

Also known as Manuel Garcia

A Spanish anarchist connected to the Four Just Men.