The Fellowship of the Frog

by Edgar Wallace

  Presently they began to arrive, and were worked out by a naval officer on a large scale map.

  “The broadcasting station is in London,” he said. “All the lines meet somewhere in the West End, I should imagine; possibly in the very heart of town. Did you find any difficulty in picking up the Frog call?” he asked the operator.

  “Yes, sir,” said the man. “I think they were sending from very close at hand.”

  “In what part of town would you say it would be?” asked Elk.

  The officer indicated a pencil mark that he had ruled across the page.

  “It is somewhere on this mark,” he said, and Elk, peering over, saw that the line passed through Cavendish Square and Cavendish Place and that, whilst the Portsmouth line missed Cavendish Place only by a block, the Harwich line crossed the Plymouth line a little to the south of the square.

  “Caverley House, obviously,” said Dick.

  He wanted to get out in the open, he wanted to talk, to discuss this monstrous thing with Elk. Had the detective also recognized the voice, he wondered? Any doubt he had on that point was set at rest. He had hardly reached Whitehall before Elk said:

  “Sounded very like a friend of ours, Captain Gordon?”

  Dick made no reply.

  “Very like,” said Elk as if he were speaking half to himself. “In fact, I’ll take any number of oaths that I know the young lady who was talking for old man Frog.”

  “Why should she do it?” groaned Dick. “Why, for the love of heaven, should she do it?”

  “I remember years ago hearing her,” said Elk reminiscently.

  Dick Gordon stopped, and, turning, glared at the other.

  “You remember … what do you mean?” he demanded.

  “She was on the stage at the time—quite a kid,” continued Elk. “They called her ‘The Child Mimic.’ There’s another thing I’ve noticed, Captain: if you take a magnifying glass and look at your skin, you see its defects, don’t you? That wireless telephone acts as a sort of magnifying glass to the voice. She always had a little lisp that I jumped at straight away. You may not have noticed it, but I’ve got pretty sharp ears. She can’t pronounce her ‘S’s’ properly, there’s a sort of faint ‘th’ sound in ‘um. You heard that?”

  Dick had heard, and nodded.

  “I never knew that she was ever on the stage,” he said more calmly. “You are sure, Elk?”

  “Sure. In some things I’m … what’s the word?—infall-i-able. I’m a bit shaky on dates, such as when Henry the First an’ all that bunch got born—I never was struck on birthdays anyway—but I know voices an’ noses. Never forget ‘um.”

  They were turning into the dark entrance of Scotland Yard when Dick said in a tone of despair:

  “It was her voice, of course. I had no idea she had been on the stage—is her father in this business?”

  “She hasn’t a father so far as I know,” was the staggering reply, and again Gordon halted.

  “Are you mad?” he asked. “Ella Bennett has a father—”

  “I’m not talking about Ella Bennett,” said the calm Elk. “I’m talking about Lola Bassano.”

  There was a silence.

  “Was it her voice?” asked Gordon a little breathlessly.

  “Sure it was Lola. It was a pretty good imitation of Miss Bennett, but any mimic will tell you that these soft voices are easy. It’s the pace of a voice that makes it—”

  “You villain!” said Dick Gordon, as a weight rolled from his heart. “You knew I meant Ella Bennett when I was talking, and you strung me alone!”

  “Blame me,” said Elk. “What’s the time?”

  It was half-past three. He gathered his reserves, and ten minutes later the police cars dropped a party at the closed door of Caverley House. The bell brought the night porter, who recognized Elk.

  “More gas trouble?” he asked.

  “Want to see the house plan,” said Elk, and listened as the porter detailed the names, occupations and peculiarities of the tenants.

  “Who owns this block?” asked the detective.

  “This is one of Maitland’s properties—Maitlands Consolidated. He’s got the Prince of Caux’s house in Berkeley Square and—”

  “Don’t worry about giving me his family history. What time did Miss Bassano come in?”

  “She’s been in all the evening—since eleven.”

  “Anybody with her?”

  The man hesitated.

  “Mr. Maitland came in with her, but he went soon after.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “Nobody except Mr. Maitland.”

  “Give me your master-key.”

  The porter demurred.

  “I’ll lose my job,” he pleaded. “Can’t you knock?”

  “Knocking is my speciality—I don’t pass a day without knocking somebody,” replied Elk, “but I want that key.”

  He did not doubt that Lola would have bolted her door, and his surmise proved sound. He had both to knock and ring before the light showed behind the transom, and Lola in a kimono and boudoir cap appeared.

  “What is the meaning of this, Mr. Elk?” she demanded. She did not even attempt to appear surprised.

  “A friendly call—can I come in?”

  She opened the door wider, and Elk went in, followed by Gordon and two detectives. Dick she ignored.

  “I’m seeing the Commissioner to-morrow,” she said, “and if he doesn’t give me satisfaction I’ll get on to the newspapers. This persecution is disgraceful. To break into a single girl’s flat in the middle of the night, when she is alone and unprotected—”

  “If there is any time when a single girl should be alone and unprotected, it is in the middle of the night,” said Elk primly. “I’m just going to have a look at your little home, Lola. We’ve got information that you’ve been burgled, Lola. Perhaps at this very minute there’s a sinister man hidden under your bed. The idea of leaving you alone, so to speak, at the mercy of unlawful characters, is repugnant to our feelin’s. Try the dining-room, Williams; I’ll search the parlour—and the bedroom.”

  “You’ll keep out of my room if you’ve any sense of decency,” said the girl.

  “I haven’t,” admitted Elk, “no false sense, anyway. Besides, Lola, I’m a family man. One of ten. And when there’s anything I shouldn’t see, just say ‘Shut your eyes’ and I’ll shut ‘um.”

  To all appearances there was nothing that looked in the slightest degree suspicious. A bathroom led from the bedroom, and the bathroom window was open. Flashing his lamp along the wall outside, Elk saw a small glass spool attached to the wall.

  “Looks to me like an insulator,” he said.

  Returning to the bedroom, he began to search for the instrument. There was a tall mahogany wardrobe against one of the walls. Opening the door, he saw row upon row of dresses and thrust in his hand.

  It was the shallowest wardrobe he had ever seen, and the backing was warm to the touch.

  “Hot cupboard, Lola?” he asked.

  She did not reply, but stood watching him, a scowl on her pretty face, her arms folded.

  Elk closed the door and his sensitive fingers searched the surface for a spring. It took him a long time to discover it, but at last he found a slip of wood that yielded to the pressure of his hand.

  There was a “click” and the front of the wardrobe began to fall.

  “A wardrobe bed, eh? Grand little things for a flat.”

  But it was no sleeping-place that was revealed (and he would have been disappointed if it had been) as he eased down the “bed.” Set on a frame were row upon row of valve lamps, transformers—all the apparatus requisite for broadcasting.

  Elk looked, and, looking, admired.

  “You’ve got a licence, I suppose?” asked Elk. He supposed nothing of the kind, for licences to
transmit are jealously issued in England. He was surprised when she went to a bureau and produced the document. Elk read and nodded.

  “You’ve got some pull,” he said with respect. “Now I’ll see your Frog licence.”

  “Don’t get funny, Elk,” she said tartly. “I’d like to know whether you’re in the habit of waking people to ask for their permits.”

  “You’ve been using this to-night to broadcast the Frogs,” Elk nodded accusingly; “and perhaps you’ll explain to Captain Gordon why?”

  She turned to Dick for the first time.

  “I’ve not used the instrument for weeks,” she said. “But the sister of a friend of mine—perhaps you know her—asked if she might use it. She left here an hour ago.”

  “You mean Miss Bennett, of course,” said Gordon, and she raised her eyebrows in simulated astonishment.

  “Why, how did you guess that?”

  “I guessed it,” said Elk, “the moment I heard you giving one of your famous imitations. I guessed she was around, teaching you how to talk like her. Lola, you’re cooked! Miss Bennett was standing right alongside me when you started talking Frog-language. She was right at my very side, and she said ‘Now, Mr. Elk, isn’t she the artfullest thing!’ You’re cooked, Lola, and you can’t do better than sit right down and tell us the truth. I’ll make it right for you. We caught ‘Seven’ last night and he’s told us everything. Frog will be in irons to-day, and I came here to give you the last final chance of getting out of all your trouble.”

  “Isn’t that wonderful of you?” she mocked him. “So you’ve caught ‘Seven’ and you’re catching the Frog! Put a pinch of salt on his tail!”

  “Yes,” said the imperturbable Elk, untruthfully, “we caught Seven and Hagn’s split. But I like you, Lol—always did. There’s something about you that reminds me of a girl I used to be crazy about—I never married her; it was a tragedy.

  “Not for her,” said Lola. “Now I’ll tell you something, Elk! You haven’t caught anybody and you won’t. You’ve put a flat-footed stool pigeon named Balder into the same cell as Hagn, with the idea of getting information, and you’re going to have a jar.”

  In other circumstances Dick Gordon would have been amused by the effect of this revelation upon Elk. The jaw of the unhappy detective dropped as he glared helplessly over his glasses at the girl, smiling her triumph. Then the smile vanished.

  “Hagn wouldn’t talk, because Frog could reach him, as he reached Mills and Litnov. As he will reach you when he decides you’re worth while. And now you can take me if you want. I’m a Frog—I never pretend I’m not. You heard all the tale that I told Ray Bennett—heard it over the detectaphone you planted. Take me and charge me!”

  Elk knew that there was no charge upon which he could hold her. And she knew that he knew.

  “Do you think you’ll get away with it, Bassano?”

  It was Gordon who spoke, and she turned her wrathful eyes upon him.

  “I’ve got a Miss to my name, Gordon,” she rapped at him.

  “Sooner or later you’ll have a number,” said Dick calmly. “You and your crowd are having the time of your young lives—perhaps because I’m incompetent, or because I’m unfortunate. But some day we shall get you, either I or my successor. You can’t fight the law and win because the law is everlasting and constant.”

  “A search of my flat I don’t mind—but a sermon I will not have,” she said contemptuously. “And now, if you men have finished, I should like to get a little beauty sleep.”

  “That is the one thing you don’t require,” said the gallant Elk, and she laughed.

  “You’re not a bad man, Elk,” she said. “You’re a bad detective, but you’ve a heart of gold.”

  “If I had, I shouldn’t trust myself alone with you,” was Elk’s parting shot.

  XIX.

  IN ELSHAM WOOD

  Dick Gordon, in the sudden lightening of his heart which had come to him when he realized that his horrible fears were without foundation, was inclined to regard the night as having been well spent. This was not Elk’s view. He was genuinely grave as they drove back to headquarters.

  “I’m frightened of these Frogs, and I admit it,” he confessed. “There’s a bad leakage somewhere—how should she know that I put Balder in with Hagn? That has staggered me. Nobody but two men, in addition to ourselves, is in the secret; and if the Frogs are capable of getting that kind of news, it is any odds on Hagn knowing that he is being drawn. They frighten me, I tell you, Captain Gordon. If they only knew a little, and hadn’t got that quite right, I should be worried. But they know everything!”

  Dick nodded.

  “The whole trouble, Elk, is that the Frogs are not an illegal association. It may be necessary to ask the Prime Minister to proclaim the society.”

  “Perhaps he’s a Frog too,” said Elk gloomily. “Don’t laugh, Captain Gordon! There are big people behind these Frogs. I’m beginning to suspect everybody.”

  “Start by suspecting me,” said Gordon good-humouredly.

  “I have,” was the frank reply. “Then it occurred to me that possibly I walk in my sleep—I used to as a boy. Likely I lead a double life, and I am a detective by day and a Frog by night—you never know. It is clear that there is a genius at the back of the Frogs,” he went on, with unconscious immodesty.

  “Lola Bassano?” suggested Dick.

  “I’ve thought of her, but she’s no organizer. She had a company on the road when she was nineteen, and it died the death from bad organization. I suppose you think that that doesn’t mean she couldn’t run the Frogs—but it does. You want exactly the same type of intelligence to control the Frogs as you want to control a bank. Maitland is the man. I narrowed the circle down to him after I had a talk with Johnson. Johnson says he’s never seen the old man’s pass-book, and although he is his private secretary, knows nothing whatever of his business transactions except that he buys property and sells it. The money old Maitland makes on the side never appears in the books, and Johnson was a very surprised man when I suggested that Maitland transacted any business at all outside the general routine of the company. And it’s not a company at all—not an incorporated company. It’s a one man show. Would you like to make sure, Captain Gordon?”

  “Sure of what?” asked Dick, startled.

  “That Miss Bennett isn’t in this at all.”

  “You don’t think for one moment she is?” asked Dick, aghast at the thought.

  “I’m prepared to believe anything,” said Elk. “We’ve got a clear road; we could be at Horsham in an hour, and it is our business to make sure. In my mind I’m perfectly satisfied that it was not Miss Bennett’s voice. But when we come down to writing out reports for the people upstairs to read, (‘the people upstairs,’ was Elk’s invariable symbol for his superiors), we are going to look silly if we say that we heard Miss Bennett’s voice and didn’t trouble to find out where Miss Bennett was.”

  “That is true,” said Dick thoughtfully, and, leaning out to the driver, Elk gave new directions.

  The grey of dawn was in the sky as the car ran through the deserted streets of Horsham and began the steady climb toward Maytree Cottage, which lay on the slope of the Shoreham Road.

  The cottage showed no signs of life. The blinds were drawn; there was no light of any kind. Dick hesitated, with his hand on the gate.

  “I don’t like waking these people,” he confessed. “Old Bennett will probably think that I’ve brought some bad news about his son.”

  “I have no conscience,” said Elk, and walked up the brick path.

  But John Bennett required no waking. Elk was hailed from one of the windows above, and, looking up, saw the mystery man leaning with his elbows on the window-sill.

  “What’s the trouble, Elk?” he asked in a low voice, as though he did not wish to awaken his daughter.

  “No trou
ble at all,” said Elk cheerfully. “We picked up a wireless telephone message in the night, and I’m under the impression that it was your daughter’s voice I heard.”

  John Bennett frowned, and Dick saw that he doubted the truth of this explanation.

  “It is perfectly true, Mr. Bennett,” he said. “I heard the voice too. We were listening in for a rather important message, and we heard Miss Bennett in circumstances which make it necessary for us to assure ourselves that it was not she who was speaking.”

  The cloud passed from John Bennett’s face.

  “That’s a queer sort of story, Captain Gordon, but I believe you. I’ll come down and let you in.”

  Wearing an old dressing-gown, he opened the door and ushered them into the darkened sitting-room.

  “I’ll call Ella, and perhaps she’ll be able to satisfy you hat she was in bed at ten o’clock last night.”

  He went out of the room, after drawing the curtains to let in the light, and Dick waited with a certain amount of pleasurable anticipation. He had been only too glad of the excuse to come to Horsham, if the truth be told. This girl had so gripped his heart that the days between their meetings seemed like eternity. They heard the feet of Bennett on the stairs, and presently the old man came in, and distress was written largely on his face.

  “I can’t understand it,” he said. “Ella is not in her room! The bed has been slept in, but she has evidently dressed and gone out.”

  Elk scratched his chin, avoiding Dick’s eyes.

  “A lot of young people like getting up early,” he said. “When I was a young man, nothing gave me greater pleasure than to see the sun rise— before I went to bed. Is she in the habit of taking a morning stroll?”

  John Bennett shook his head.

  “I’ve never known her to do that before. It’s curious I did not hear her, because I slept very badly last night. Will you excuse me, gentlemen?”

  He went upstairs and came down in a few minutes, dressed. Together they passed out into the garden It was now quite light, though the sun had not yet tipped the horizon. John Bennett made a brief but fruitless search of the ground behind the cottage, and came hack to them with a confession of failure. He was no more troubled than Dick Gordon. It was impossible that it could have been she, that Elk was mistaken. Yet Lola had been emphatic. Against that, the hall-porter at Caverley House had been equally certain that the only visitor to Lola’s flat that night was the aged Mr. Maitland; and so far as he knew, or Elk had been able to discover, there was no other entrance into the building.