Character guide

Leon Gonsalez

major

Also known as Leon, Gonsalez, Mr. Lee, Mr. Leon Gonsalez, Mr. Gonsalez, Lee

Leon Gonsalez moves through the novel as the most unnerving kind of gentleman: soft-voiced, amused, faintly apologetic about the haste that once cost him a man's cranial measurements. He interrogates Monty Newton with a heated shoehorn and a silken gag, and he is the one who plucks Mirabelle Leicester out of Oberzohn's drugged orangeade. His instinct for truth, not merely espionage, makes him the story's quiet engine — the watcher who arrives just before the worst happens.

Mirabelle Leicester

major

Also known as Mirabelle, Miss Mirabelle Leicester, Miss Leicester

Mirabelle Leicester arrives at Oberzohn & Smitts as a laboratory secretary and quickly understands she has never once been free to come and go since. She has read much, guessed much, and her childhood habit of linking cause to effect now tells her the drugged orangeade, the German 'Lord Evington,' and Barberton's death are all threads of the same design. Her Aunt Alma's crime scrapbooks have given her an unlikely education in the Just Men — and she will need every scrap of it.

George Manfred

major

Also known as George, Manfred, Mr. Manfred

George Manfred runs the Triangle from a Curzon Street house where the servants' hall has long since stopped remarking on his eccentricity of sharing breakfast with his staff. He has been inside a condemned cell, he knows Johnson Lee by telephone, and he warns Meadows to tread carefully around the snake. Where Leon improvises, Manfred calculates — the still center of an organization the police pensioner still half-fears.

Gurther

major

Also known as Mr. Gurther, Monty Newton, Newton, Monty, Herr Gurther, Sven Gurther

Gurther dances well, dresses well, and is the man Oberzohn uses when a message must be delivered in a way that cannot be forgotten. But he has begun smoking in the doctor's presence without permission, and Oberzohn's hand has dropped back at his side more than once. The warrant out for him has not made him careless — only more distant, more watchful, and more dangerous to the man who thinks he still owns him.

Dr. Eruc Oberzohn

major

Also known as Dr. Oberzohn, Oberzohn, Eruc, Baron Eruc Oberzohn

Dr. Oberzohn admires ingenuity, locks doors to keep his guests from seeing too much, and digs alone in the dark rather than trust his four desperate men with the work. He contemns all things Teutonic yet has a sneaking reverence for the Junker methods he cannot quite bring himself to use on Gurther. He is the spider at the center of the advertisement, the orangeade, and the surveillance Mirabelle cannot shake — and he is beginning to understand that his own web is fraying.

Montague Newton

supporting

Also known as Mr. Newton, Monty, Monty Newton, Captain Monty, Captain Newton, Herr Newton

Monty Newton receives unwelcome visitors, snarls at his footman Fred for thinking too much, and insists to Leon and Meadows that Mirabelle Leicester simply went home. He is not bluffing about the house search — Leon is sure of that — but he is bluffing about something, and Leon has already photographed the contents of his hidden safe. His daughter Joan's entanglement with the Oberzohn circle makes him both a target and a suspect in the story's tightening net.

Inspector Meadows

supporting

Also known as Meadows, Mr. Meadows, friend Meadows

The Scotland Yard man the Just Men call when they need official muscle, pulled between the law he serves and the vigilantes he quietly trusts.

Elijah Washington

supporting

Also known as Mr. Elijah Washington, Elijah Washington, Washington, Mr. Washington

An American detective who lends the Just Men his nerve and his snakebite remedies, wary of curtained train compartments and English reticence alike.

Joan Newton

supporting

Also known as Joan, Miss Joan, Joan Newton

Montague Newton's daughter, swept from a glittering box at the theatre into Oberzohn's curtained limousine and a captivity she never chose.

Aunt Alma

supporting

Also known as Alma, Miss Alma Goddard, Alma Goddard, Miss Goddard, Goddard

Mirabelle's sharp-tongued guardian at Heavytree Farm, who meets midnight motorcars, mysterious nurses, and Just Men with the same dry suspicion.

Raymond Poiccart

supporting

Also known as Poiccart, Mr. Poiccart

The quiet strategist of the Three Just Men, whose cool head and reading of criminal psychology keep his comrades a step ahead of Oberzohn.

Johnson Lee

supporting

Also known as Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson Lee, Johnson Lee, Mr. Lee

A blind man whose hidden history with the Oberzohns makes him both a target and a keeper of dangerous knowledge the Just Men need.

Lew Cuccini

minor

Also known as Cuccini, Lew

A criminal associate of the Oberzohns.

Sam Barberton

minor

Also known as Mr. Sam Barberton, Mr. Barberton, Barberton, friend Barberton

A man entangled in the Oberzohns' gold scheme.

Digby

minor

Also known as Mr. Digby

A nervous associate of the Three Just Men.

Iwan Pfeiffer

minor

Also known as Pfeiffer

A German chemist working for the Oberzohns.

Dr. Elver

minor

Also known as Elver

A doctor involved with the Oberzohn family.

Poole

minor

Also known as Mr. Poole

A servant or employee at the Oberzohn house.

Lisa Marthon

minor

Also known as Lisa

A woman connected to the Oberzohns' operations.

Fred

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or driver.

Flash Jane Smith

minor

Also known as Jane Smith, Jane

A woman with a brief role in the story.

Lord Evington

minor

A nobleman mentioned in the narrative.

Mike Selwyn

minor

Also known as Mike

A minor character, possibly a friend of the Newtons.

Adolph Oberzohn

minor

Also known as Adolph

A relative of Dr. Eruc Oberzohn.

Minnie Gray

minor

Also known as Minnie, Marie

A woman with a connection to the Oberzohns.

Lady Mary

minor

Also known as Mary

A titled woman who appears briefly.

Professor Leicester

minor

Also known as Leicester

Mirabelle Leicester's father, a professor.

Phillips

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant.

Benton

minor

A minor character mentioned in the story.