The Fellowship of the Frog Page 20

  He slapped his knee, convulsed with silent laughter, and the girl honestly thought he was mad and edged away from him.

  “But I’ve got a great idea—got it when I saw you. It’s one of the greatest ideas I’ve ever had, miss. Are you a typewriter?”

  “A typist?” she smiled. “No, I can type, but I’m not a very good typist.”

  His voice sank until it was almost unintelligible.

  “You come up to my office one day, and we’ll have a great joke. Wouldn’t think I was a joker, would yon? Eighty-seven I am, miss. You come up to my office and I’ll make you laugh!”

  Suddenly he became more serious.

  “They’ll get me—I know it. I haven’t told Matilda, because she’d start screaming. But I know. And the baby!”

  This seemed to afford the saturnine old man the greatest possible enjoyment. He rocked from side to side with mirth, until a fit of coughing attacked him.

  “That’s all, miss. You come up to my office. Old Johnson isn’t there. You come up and see me. Never had a letter from me, have you?” he suddenly asked, as he rose.

  “No, Mr. Maitland,” she said in surprise.

  “There was one wrote,” said he. “Maybe I didn’t post it. Maybe I thought better. I dunno.”

  He started and drew back as a figure appeared before the house.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, and she felt a hand on her arm that trembled.

  “That is my father, Mr. Maitland,” she said. “I expect he got a little nervous about my being out.”

  “Your father, eh?” He was more relieved than resentful. “Mr. John Bennett, his name is, by all accounts. Don’t tell him I’ve been in the workhouse,” he urged, “or in quod. And I have been in quod, miss. Met all the big men, every one of ‘um. And met a few of ‘um out, too. I bet I’m the only man in this country that’s ever seen Saul Morris, the grandest feller in the business. Only met him once, but I shall never forget him.”

  John Bennett saw them pacing toward him, and stood undecided as to whether he should join them or whether Ella would be embarrassed by such a move. Maitland decided the matter by hobbling over to him.

  “Morning, mister,” he said. “Just having a talk to your gel. Rather early in the morning, eh? Hope you don’t mind, Mr. Bennett.”

  “I don’t mind,” said John Bennett. “Won’t you come inside, Mr. Maitland?”

  “No, no, no,” said the other fearfully. “I’ve got to get on. Matilda will be waiting for me. Don’t forget, miss: come up to my office and have that joke!”

  He did not offer to shake hands, nor did he take off his hat. In fact, his manners were deplorable. A curt nod to the girl, and then:

  “Well, so long, mister—-” he began, and at that moment John Bennett moved out from the shadow of the house.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Maitland,” he said.

  Maitland did not speak. His eyes were open wide with terror, his face blanched to the colour of death.

  “You … you!” he croaked. “Oh, my God!”

  He seemed to totter, and the girl sprang to catch him, but he recovered himself, and, turning, ran down the path with an agility which was surprising in one of his age, tore open the gate and flew along the road. They heard his dry sobs coming back to them.

  “Father,” whispered the girl in fear, “did he know you? Did he recognize you?”

  “I wonder,” said John Bennett of Horsham.

  XXV.

  IN REGARD TO SAUL MORRIS

  Dick Gordon ‘phoned across to headquarters, and Elk reported immediately.

  “I’ve discovered six good get-away bags, and each one is equipped as completely and exactly as the one we found at King’s Cross.”

  “No clue as to the gentleman who deposited them?

  “No, sir, not so much as a clue. We’ve tested them all for finger-prints, and we’ve got a few results; but as they have been handled by half a dozen attendants, I don’t think we shall get much out of it. Still, we can but try.”

  “Elk, I would give a few years of my life to get to the inside of this Frog mystery. I’m having Lola shadowed, though I shouldn’t think she’d be in that lot. I know of nobody who looks less like a tramp than Lola Bassano! Lew has disappeared, and when I sent a man round this morning to discover what had happened to that young man about town, Mr. Raymond Bennett, he was not visible. He refused to see the caller on the plea that he was ill, and is staying in his room all day. Elk, who’s the Frog?”

  Elk paced up and down the apartment, his hands in his pockets, his steel-rimmed spectacles sliding lower and lower down his long nose.

  “There are only two possibilities,” he said. “One is Harry Lyme—an ex-convict who was supposed to have been drowned in the Channel Queen some years ago. I put him amongst them, because all the records we have of him show that he was a brilliant organizer, a super-crook, and one of the two men capable of opening Lord Farmley’s safe and slipping that patent catch on Johnson’s window. And believe me, Captain Gordon, it was an artist who burgled Johnson!”

  “The other man?” said Dick.

  “He’s also comfortably dead,” said Elk grimly. “Saul Morris, the cleverest of all. He’s got Lyme skinned to death—an expression I picked up in my recent travels, Captain. And Morris is American; and although I’m as patriotic as any man in this country, I hand it to the Americans when it comes to smashing safes. I’ve examined two thousand records of known criminals, and I’ve fined it down to these two fellows—and they’re both dead! They say that dead men leave no trails, and if Frog is Morris or Lyme, they’re about right. Lyme’s dead—drowned. Morris was killed in a railway accident in the United States. The question is, which of the ghosts we can charge.”

  Dick Gordon pulled open the drawer of his desk and took out an envelope that bore the inscription of the Western Union. He threw it across the table.

  “What’s this, Captain Gordon?”

  “It’s an answer to a question. You mentioned Saul Morris before, and I have been making inquiries in New York. Here’s the reply.”

  The cablegram was from the Chief of Police, New York City.

  “Answering your inquiry. Saul Morris is alive, and is believed to be in England at this moment. No charges pending against him here, but generally supposed to be the man who cleared out strong room of s.s. Mantania, February 17, 1898, Southampton, England, and got away with 55,000,000 francs. Acknowledge.”

  Elk read and re-read the cablegram, then he folded it carefully, put it back in its envelope and passed it across the table.

  “Saul Morris is in England.” he said mechanically. “That seems to explain a whole lot.”

  The search which detectives had conducted at the railway termini had produced nine bags, all of which contained identical outfits. In every case there was a spare suit, a clean shirt, two collars, one tie, a Browning pistol with cartridges, a forged passport without photograph, the Annatio and money. Only in one respect did the grips differ. At Paddington the police had recovered one which was a little larger than its fellows, all of which were of the same pattern and size. This held the same outfit as the remainder, with the exception that, in addition, there was a thick pad of cheque forms, every cheque representing a different branch of a different bank. There were cheques upon the Credit Lyonnais, upon the Ninth National Bank of New York, upon the Burrowstown Trust, upon the Bank of Spain, the Banks of Italy and Roumania, in addition to about fifty branches of the five principal banks of England. Occupied as he had been, Elk had not had time to make a very close inspection, but in the morning he determined to deal seriously with the cheques. He was satisfied that inquiries made at the banks and branches would reveal different depositors; but the numbers might enable him to bring the ownership home to one man or one group of men.

  As the bags were brought in, they had been examined superficially and placed in Elk’s
safe, and to accommodate them, the ordinary contents of the safe had been taken out and placed in other repositories. Each bag had been numbered and labelled with the name of the station from whence it was taken, the name of the officer who had brought it in, and particulars of its contents. These facts are important, as having a bearing upon what subsequently happened.

  Elk arrived at his office soon after ten o’clock, having enjoyed the first full night’s sleep he had had for weeks. He had, as his assistants, Balder and a detective-sergeant named Fayre, a promising young man, in whom Elk placed considerable trust. Dick Gordon arrived almost simultaneously with the detective chief, and they went into the building together.

  “There isn’t the ghost of a chance that we shall be rewarded for the trouble we’ve taken to trace these cheques,” said Elk, “and I am inclined to place more hope upon the possibility of the handbags yielding a few items which were not apparent at first examination. All these bags are lined, and there is a possibility that they have false bottoms. I am going to cut them up thoroughly, and if there’s anything left after I’m through, the Frogs are welcome to their secret.”

  In the office, Balder and the detective-sergeant were waiting, and Elk searched for his key. The production of the key of the safe was invariably something of a ritual where Elk was concerned. He gave Dick Gordon the impression that he was preparing to disrobe, for the key reposed in some mysterious region which involved the loosening of coat, waistcoat, and the diving into a pocket where no pocket should be. Presently the ceremony was through, Elk solemnly inserted the key and swung back the door.

  The safe was so packed with bags that they began to slide toward him, when the restraining pressure of the door was removed. One by one he handed them out, and Fayre put them on the table.

  “We’ll take that Paddington one first,” said Elk, pointing to the largest of the bags. “And get me that other knife, Balder.”

  The two men walked out into the passage, leaving Fayre alone.

  “Can you see the end of this, Captain Gordon?” asked Elk.

  “The end of the Frogs? Why, yes, I think I can. I could almost say I was sure.”

  They had reached the door of the clerk’s office and found Balder holding a murderous looking weapon in his hand.

  “Here it is—” he began, and the next instant Dick was flung violently to the floor, with Elk on top of him.

  There was the shrill shriek of smashed glass, a pressure of wind, and, through all this violence, the deafening thunder of an explosion.

  Elk was first to his feet and flew back to his room. The door hung on its hinges; every pane of glass was gone, and the sashes with them. From his room poured a dense volume of smoke, into which he plunged. He had hardly taken a step before he tripped on the prostrate figure of Fayre, and, stooping, he half-lifted and half-dragged him into the corridor. One glance was sufficient to show that, if the man was not dead, there seemed little hope of his recovery. The fire-bells were ringing throughout the building. A swift rush of feet on the stairs, and the fire squad came pelting down the corridor, dragging their hose behind them.

  What fire there was, was soon extinguished, but Elk’s office was a wreck. Even the door of the safe had been blown from its hinges. There was not a single article of furniture left, and a big hole gaped in the floor.

  “Save those bags,” said Elk and went back to look after the injured man, and not until he had seen his assistant placed in the ambulance did he return to a contemplation of the ruin which the bomb had made.

  “Oh, yes, it was a bomb, sir,” said Elk.

  A group of senior officers stood in the corridor, looking at the havoc.

  “And something particularly heavy in the shape of bombs. The wonder is that Captain Gordon and I were not there. I told Fayre to open the bag, but I thought he’d wait until we returned with the knife—we intended examining the lining. Fayre must have opened the bag and the bomb exploded.”

  “But weren’t the bags examined before?” asked the Commissioner wrathfully.

  Elk nodded.

  “They were examined by me yesterday—every one. The Paddington bag was turned inside out, every article it contained was placed on my table, and catalogued. I myself returned them. There was no bomb.”

  “But how could they be got at?” asked the other.

  Elk shook his head.

  “I don’t know, sir. The only other person who has a key to this safe is the Assistant Commissioner of my department, Colonel McClintock, who is on his holidays. We might all have been killed.”

  “What was the explosive?”

  “Dynamite,” said Elk promptly. “It blew down.” He pointed to the hole in the floor. “Nitro-glycerine blows up and sideways,” he sniffed. “There’s no doubt about it being dynamite.”

  In his search of the office he found a twisted coil of thin steel, later the blackened and crumpled face of a cheap alarm clock.

  “Both time and contact,” he said. “Those Frogs are taking no chances.”

  He shifted such of his belongings as he could discover into Balder’s office.

  There was little chance that this outrage would be kept from the newspapers. The explosion had blown out the window and a portion of the brickwork and had attracted a crowd on the Embankment outside. Indeed, when Elk left headquarters, he was confronted by newspaper bills telling of the event.

  His first call was at the near-by hospital, to where the unfortunate Fayre had been taken, and the news he received was encouraging. The doctors thought that, with any kind of luck, they would not only save the man’s life, but also save him from any serious mutilation.

  “He may lose a finger or two, and he’s had a most amazing escape,” said the house surgeon. “I can’t understand why he wasn’t blown to pieces.”

  “What I can’t understand,” said Elk emphatically, “is why I wasn’t blown to pieces.”

  The surgeon nodded.

  “These high explosives play curious tricks,” said the surgeon. “I understand that the force of the explosion blew off the door of the safe, and yet this paper, which must also have been within range, is scarcely singed.”

  He took a square of paper out of his pocket; the edges were blackened; one corner had been burnt off.

  “I found this in his clothing. It must have been driven there when the bomb detonated,” said the surgeon.

  Elk smoothed out the paper and read:

  “With the compliments of Number Seven.”

  Carefully he folded the paper.

  “I’ll take this,” he said, and put it tenderly away in the interior of his spectacle case. “Do you believe in hunches, doctor?”

  “Do you mean premonitions?” smiled the surgeon. “To an extent I do.”

  Elk nodded.

  “I have a hunch that I’m going to meet Number Seven—very shortly,” he said.

  XXVI.

  PROMOTION FOR BALDER

  A week had passed, and the explosion at headquarters was ancient history. The injured detective was making fair progress toward recovery, and in some respects the situation was stagnant.

  Elk apparently accepted failure as an inevitability, and seemed, even to his greatest admirer, to be hypnotized into a fatalistic acceptance of the situation. His attitude was a little deceptive. On the sixth day following the explosion, headquarters made a raid upon the cloak-rooms, and again, as Elk had expected, produced from every single terminus parcels office, a brand-new bag with exactly the same equipment as the others had had, except that the Paddington find differed from none of its fellows.

  The bags were opened by an Inspector of Explosives, after very careful preliminary tests; but they contained nothing more deadly than the Belgian pistols and the self-same passports, this time made out in the name of “Clarence Fielding.”

  “These fellows are certainly thorough,” said Elk with r
eluctant admiration, surveying his haul.

  “Are you keeping the bags in your office?” asked Dick, but Elk shook his melancholy head.

  “I think not,” said he.

  He had had the bags immediately emptied, their contents sent to the Research Department; the bags themselves were now stripped of leather and steel frames, for they had been scientifically sliced, inch by inch.

  “My own opinion,” said Balder oracularly, “is that there’s somebody at police headquarters who is working against us. I’ve been considering it for a long time, and after consulting my wife—”

  “You haven’t consulted your children, too, have you?” asked Elk unpleasantly. “The less you talk about headquarters’ affairs in your domestic circle, the better will be your chance of promotion.”

  Mr. Balder sniffed.

  “There’s no fear of that, anyway,” he said sourly. “I’ve got myself in their bad books. And I did think there was a chance for me—it all comes of your putting me in with Hagn.”

  “You’re an ungrateful devil,” said Elk.

  “Who’s this Number Seven, sir?” asked Balder. “Thinking the matter over, and having discussed it with my wife, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s one of the most important Frogs, and if we could only get him, we’d be a long way towards catching the big fellow.”

  Elk put down his pen—he was writing his report at the time—and favoured his subordinate with a patient and weary smile.

  “You ought to have gone into politics,” he said, and waved his subordinate from the room with the end of his penholder.

  He had finished his report and was reading it over with a critical eye, when the service ‘phone announced a visitor.

  “Send him up,” said Elk when he had heard the name. He rang his bell for Balder. “This report goes to Captain Gordon to initial,” he said, and as he put down the envelope, Joshua Broad stood in the doorway.

  “Good morning, Mr. Elk.” He nodded to Balder, although he had never met him. “Good morning,” he said.