The Fellowship of the Frog Page 30

  Joshua Broad was silent until they were going up the steps of the house.

  “When you know as much about the Frog as I know, you’ll be surprised at nothing,” he said, and did not add to this cryptic remark.

  Six o’clock came, and there was no further news from the west. Seven o’clock, and the girl’s condition became pitiable. She had borne herself throughout the night with a courage that excited the admiration of the men; but now, as the hour was drawing close, she seemed on the verge of collapse. At half-past seven the telephone bell rang, and Elk answered.

  It was the Chief of Police at Newbury speaking.

  “Captain Gordon left Didcot an hour ago,” was the message.

  “Didcot!” gasped Elk in consternation. He looked at the clock. “An hour ago—and he had to make Gloucester in sixty minutes!”

  The girl, who had been in the dining-room trying to take coffee which Gordon’s servant had prepared, came into the study, and Elk dared not continue the conversation.

  “All right,” he said loudly, and smashed down the receiver.

  “What is the news, Mr. Elk?” The girl’s voice was a wail.

  “The news,” said Elk, twisting his face into a smile, “is fine!”

  “What do they say?” she persisted.

  “Oh, them?” said Elk, looking at the telephone. “That was a friend of mine, asking me if I’d dine with him to-night.”

  She went back to the dining-room, only half-satisfied, and Elk called the American to him.

  “Go and get a doctor,” he said in a low voice, “and tell him to bring something that’ll put this young lady to sleep for twelve hours.”

  “Why?” asked Broad. “Is the news bad?”

  Elk nodded.

  “There isn’t a chance of saving this boy—not the ghost of a chance!” he said.

  XXXVII.

  THE GET-AWAY

  Dick, with his ear to the floor, heard the words “Frog says he’s got to die,” and his cracked lips parted in a grin. “Have you heard him moving about?” asked Hagn.

  “No, he’s asleep, I expect,” said another voice. “We shall have to wait for light. We can’t do it in the dark. We shall be killing one another.”

  This view commended itself to most of the men present. Dick counted six voices. He struck a match for another survey, and again his eye fell upon the cable. And then an inspiration came to him. Moving stealthily across the floor, he reached up, and, gripping the cable, pulled on it steadily. Under his weight, the supporting insulator broke loose. By great good luck it fell upon the heap of rubbish in the fireplace and made no sound. For the next half-hour he worked feverishly, unwrapping the rubber insulation from the wires of the cable, pulling the copper strands free. His hands were bleeding, his nails broken; but after half-an-hour’s hard work, he had the end of the cable frayed. The door opened outward, he remembered with satisfaction, and, lifting the steel plate, he laid it tight against the door, so that whoever entered must step upon it. Then he began to fasten the frayed copper wires of the cable to the rivet holes; and he had hardly finished his work before he heard a stealthy sound on the stairs.

  Day had come now, and light was streaming through the glass roof of the factory. He heard a faint whisper, and even as faint a click, as the bolts of the door were pulled; and, creeping to the switch, he turned it down.

  The door was jerked open, and a man stepped upon the plate. Before his scream could warn him who followed the second of the party had been flung senseless to the floor.

  “What the devil’s wrong?” It was Hagn’s voice. He came running up the stairs, put one foot on the electric plate, and stood for the space of a second motionless. Then, with a gasping sob, he fell backward, and Dick heard the crash as he struck the stairs.

  He did not wait any longer. Jumping over the plate, he leapt down the stairs, treading underfoot the senseless figure of Hagn. The little office was empty. On the table lay one of his pistols. He gripped it, and fled along the bare factory hall, through a door into the open. He heard a shout, and, looking round, saw two of the party coming at him, and, raising his pistol, he pressed the trigger. There was a click—Hagn had emptied the magazine.

  A Browning is an excellent weapon even if it is not loaded, and Dick Gordon brought the barrel down with smashing force upon the head of the man who tried to grapple with him. Then he turned and ran.

  He had made a mistake when he thought there were only six men in the building; there must have been twenty, and most of them were in full cry.

  He tried to reach the road, and was separated only by a line of bushes. But here he blundered. The bushes concealed a barbed wire fence, and he had to run along uneven ground, and in his stockinged feet the effort was painful. His slow progress enabled his pursuers to get ahead. Doubling back, Dick flew for the second of the three buildings, and as he ran, he took out the magazine of his pistol. As he feared, it was empty.

  Now they were on him. He could hear the leading man’s breath, and he himself was nearly spent. And then, before him, he saw a round fire-alarm, fixed to the wall, and in a flash the memory of an almost forgotten conversation came back to him. With his bare hands he smashed the glass and tugged at the alarm, and at that minute they were on him. He fought desperately, but against their numbers resistance was almost useless. He must gain time.

  “Get up, you fellows!” he shouted. “Hagn’s dead.”

  It was an unfortunate statement, for Hagn came out of the next building at that moment, very shaken but very alive. He was livid with rage, and babbled in some language which Dick did not know, but which he guessed was Swedish.

  “I’ll fix you for that. You shall try electric shock yourself, you dog!”

  He drove his fist at the prisoner’s face, but Dick twisted his head and the blow struck the brickwork of the building against which he stood. With a scream, the man leapt at him, clawing and tearing with open hands, and this was Dick’s salvation. For the men who were gripping his arms released their hold, that their chief might have freer play. Dick struck out, hitting scientifically for the body, and with a yell Hagn collapsed. Before they could stop him, Gordon was away like the wind, this time making for the gate.

  He had reached it when the hand of the nearest man fell on him. He flung him aside and staggered into the roadway, and then, from down the straight road, came the clang of bells, a glitter of brass and a touch of crimson. A motor fire-engine was coming at full speed.

  For a moment the men grouped about the gate stared at this intervention. Then, without taking any further notice of their quarry, they turned and ran. A word to the fire chief explained the situation. Another engine was coming, at breakneck speed, and firemen were men for whom Frogs had no terror.

  Whilst Hagn was being carried to one of the waiting wagons, Dick looked at his watch; it was six o’clock. He went in search of his car, fearing the worst. Hagn, however, had made no attempt to put the car out of gear; probably he had some plan for using it himself. Three minutes later, Dick, dishevelled, grimy, bearing the marks of Hagn’s talons upon his face, swung out into the road and set the bonnet of the car for Gloucester. He could not have gone faster even had he known that his watch was stopped.

  Through Swindon at breakneck speed, and he was on the Gloucester Road. He looked at his watch again. The hands still pointed to six, and he gave a gasp. He was going all out now, but the road was bad, full of windings, and once he was nearly thrown out of the car when he struck a ridge on the road.

  A tyre burst, and he almost swerved into the hedge, but he got her nose straight again and continued on a flat tyre. It brought his speed down appreciably, and he grew hot and cold, as mile after mile of the road flashed past without a sign of the town.

  And then, with Gloucester Cathedral showing its spires above the hill, a second tyre exploded. He could not stop: he must go on, if he had to run in to Glouces
ter on the rims. And now the pace was painfully slow in comparison with that frantic rush which had carried him through Berkshire and Wiltshire to the edge of Somerset.

  He was entering the straggling suburbs of the town. The roads were terrible; he was held up by a street car, but, disregarding a policeman’s warning, flew past almost under the wheels of a great traction engine. And now he saw the time—two minutes to eight, and the gaol was half a mile farther on. He set his teeth end prayed.

  As he turned into the main street, with the gaol gates before him, the clocks of the cathedral struck eight, and to Dick Gordon they were the notes of doom.

  They would delay the carrying out of the death penalty for nothing short of the reprieve he carried. Punctually to the second, Ray Bennett would die. The agony of that moment was a memory that turned him grey. He brought the bumping car to a halt before the prison gates and staggered to the bell. Twice he pulled, but the gates remained closed. Dick pulled off his sock and found the soddened reprieve, streaky with blood, for his feet were bleeding. Again he rang with the fury of despair. Then a little wicket opened and the dark face of a warder appeared.

  “You’re not allowed in,” he said curtly. “You know what is happening here.”

  “Home Office,” said Dick thickly, “Home Office messenger. I have a reprieve!”

  The wicket closed, and, after an eternity, the lock turned and the heavy door opened.

  “I’m Captain Gordon,” gasped Dick, “from the Public Prosecutor’s office, and I carry a reprieve for James Carter.”

  The warder shook his head.

  “The execution took place five minutes ago, sir,” he said.

  “But the Cathedral clock!” gasped Dick.

  “The Cathedral clock is four minutes slow,” said the warder. “I am afraid Carter is dead.”

  XXXVIII.

  THE MYSTERY MAN

  Ray Bennett woke from a refreshing sleep and sat up in bed. One of the warders, who had watched him all night, got up and came over.

  “Do you want your clothes, Carter?” he said. “The Governor thought you wouldn’t care to wear those old things of yours.”

  “And he was right,” said the grateful Ray. “This looks a good suit,” he said as he pulled on the trousers.

  The warder coughed.

  “Yes, it’s a good suit,” he agreed.

  He did not say more, but something in his demeanour betrayed the truth. These were the clothes in which some man had been hanged, and yet Ray’s hands did not shake as he fixed the webbed braces which held them. Poor clothes, to do duty on two such dismal occasions! He hoped they would be spared the indignity of a third experience.

  They brought him his breakfast at six o’clock. Yet once more his eyes strayed toward the writing-pad, and then, with breakfast over, came the chaplain, a quiet man in minister’s garb, strength in every line of his mobile face. They talked a while, and then the warder suggested that Ray should go to take exercise in the paved yard outside. He was glad of the privilege. He wanted once more to look upon the blue sky, to draw into his lungs the balm of God’s air.

  Yet he knew that it was not a disinterested kindness, and well guessed why this privilege had been afforded to him, as he walked slowly round the exercise yard, arm in arm with the clergyman. He knew now what lay behind the third door. They were going to try the trap in the death house, and they wished to spare his feelings.

  In half an hour he was back in the cell.

  “Do you want to make any confession, Carter? Is that your name?”

  “No, it is not my name, sir,” said Ray quietly, “but that doesn’t matter.”

  “Did you kill this man?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ray. “I wanted to kill him, and therefore it is likely that I did.”

  At ten minutes to eight came the Governor to shake hands, and with him the Sheriff. The clock in the prison hall moved slowly, inexorably forward. Through the open door of the cell Ray could see it, and, knowing this, the Governor closed the door, for it was one minute to eight, and it would soon open again. Ray saw the door move. For a second his self-possession deserted him, and he turned his back to the man who came with a quick step, and, gripping his hands, strapped them.

  “God forgive me! God forgive me!” murmured somebody behind him, and at the sound of that voice Ray spun round and faced the executioner.

  The hangman was John Bennett!

  Father and son, executioner and convicted murderer soon to be launched to death, they faced one another, and then, in a voice that was almost inaudible, John Bennett breathed the word:

  “Ray!”

  Ray nodded. It was strange that, in that moment, his mind was going back over the mysterious errands of his father, his hatred of the job into which circumstances had forced him.

  “Ray!” breathed the man again.

  “Do you know this man?” It was the Governor, and his voice was shaking with emotion.

  John Bennett turned.

  “He is my son,” he said, and with a quick pull loosed the strap.

  “You must go on with this, Bennett.” The Governor’s voice was stern and terrible.

  “Go on with it?” repeated John Bennett mechanically. “Go on with this? Kill my own son? Are you mad? Do you think I am mad?” He took the boy in his arms, his cheek against the hairy face. “My boy! Oh, my boy!” he said, and smoothed his hair as he had done in the days when Ray was a child. Then, recovering himself instantly, he thrust the boy through the open door into the death chamber, followed him and slammed the door, bolting it.

  There was no other doorway except that, to which he had the key, and this he thrust into the lock that it might not be opened from the other side. Ray looked at the bare chamber, the dangling yellow rope, the marks of the trap, and fell back against the wail, his eyes shut, shivering. Then, standing in the middle of the trap, John Bennett hacked the rope until it was severed, hacked it in pieces as it lay on the floor. Then:

  Crack, crash!

  The two traps dropped, and into the yawning gap he flung the cut rope.

  “Father!”

  Ray was staring at him; oblivious to the thunderous blows which were being rained on the door, the old man came towards him, took the boy’s face between his hands and kissed him.

  “Will you forgive me, Ray?” he asked brokenly. “I had to do this. I was forced to do it. I starved before I did it. I came once … out of curiosity to help the executioner—a broken-down doctor, who had taken on the work. And he was ill … I hanged the murderer. I had just come from the medical school. It didn’t seem so dreadful to me then. I tried to find some other way of making money, and lived in dread all my life that somebody would point his finger at me, and say: ‘There goes Benn, the executioner.’“

  “Benn, the executioner!” said Ray wonderingly. “Are you Benn?”

  The old man nodded.

  “Benn, come out! I give you my word of honour that I will postpone the execution until to-morrow. You can’t stay there.”

  John Bennett looked round at the grating, then up to the cut rope. The execution could not proceed. Such was the routine of death that the rope must he expressly issued from the headquarter gaol. No other rope would serve. All the paraphernalia of execution, down to the piece of chalk that marks the “T” on the trap where a man must put his feet, must be punctiliously forwarded from prison headquarters, and as punctiliously returned.

  John shot back the bolts, opened the door and stepped out.

  The faces of the men in the condemned cell were ghastly. The Governor’s was white and drawn, the prison doctor seemed to have shrunk, and the Sheriff sat on the bed, his face hidden in his hands.

  “I will telegraph to London and tell them the circumstances,” said the Governor. “I’m not condemning you for what you’re doing, Benn. It would be monstrous to expect you to have don
e—this thing.”

  A warder came along the corridor and through the door of the cell. And behind him, entering the prison by virtue of his authority, a dishevelled, dust-stained, limping figure, his face scratched, streaks of dried blood on his face, his eyes red with weariness. For a second John Bennett did not recognize him, and then:

  “A reprieve, by the King’s own hand,” said Dick Gordon unsteadily, and handed the stained envelope to the Governor.

  XXXIX.

  THE AWAKENING

  Throughout the night Ella Bennett lay, half waking, half sleeping. She remembered the doctor coming; she remembered Elk’s urgent request that she should drink the draught he had prepared; and though she had suspected its nature and at first had fought against drinking that milky-white potion, she had at last succumbed, and had lain down on the sofa, determined that she would not sleep until she knew the worst or the best. She was exhausted with the mental fight she had put up to preserve her sanity, and then she had dozed.

  She was dimly conscious, as she came back to understanding, that she was lying on a bed, and that somebody had taken off her shoes and loosened her hair. With a tremendous effort she opened her eyes and saw a woman, sitting by a window, reading. The room was intensely masculine; it smelt faintly of smoke.

  “Dick’s bed,” she muttered, and the woman put down her book and got up.

  Ella looked at her, puzzled. Why did she wear those white bands about her hair, and that butcher-blue wrapper and the white cuffs? She was a nurse, of course. Satisfied with having solved that problem, Ella closed her eyes and went back again into the land of dreams.

  She woke again. The woman was still there, but this time the girl’s mind was in order.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  The nurse came over with a glass of water, and Ella drank greedily.

  “It is seven o’clock,” she said.

  “Seven!” The girl shivered, and then, with a cry, tried to rise. “It is evening!” she gasped. “Oh, what happened?”