Elk 01 The Fellowship of the Frog

by Edgar Wallace

  “I don’t think anybody likes it at first,” said Lew. “It’s like tomatoes—a cultivated taste.”

  He was watching his companion keenly.

  “Where do we go from Gloucester?” asked Ray.

  “We don’t go anywhere from Gloucester. We just stop there for a day, and then we change and come back.”

  “It’s a stupid idea,” said Ray Bennett, screwing up his eyes and yawning. “Who is this Frog, Lew?” He yawned again, lay back on the grass, his hands under his head.

  Lew Brady emptied the remainder of the flask’s contents upon the grass, screwed up the stopper and shook the cup before he rose and walked across to the sleeping boy.

  “Hi, get up!” he said.

  There was no answer.

  “Get up, you!”

  With a groan, Ray turned over, his head on his arms, and did not move again. A sudden misgiving carne to Lew Brady. Suppose he was dead? He went livid at the thought. That quarrel, so cleverly engineered by the Frog, would be enough to convict him. He whipped the flask from his pocket and slipped it into the coat pocket of the sleeper. And then he heard a sound, and, turning, saw a man watching him. Lew stared, opened his mouth to speak, and:

  “Plop!”

  He saw the flash of the flame before the bullet struck him. He tried to open his mouth to speak, and:

  “Plop!”

  Lew Brady was dead before he touched the ground.

  The man removed the silencer of the pistol, walked leisurely across to where Ray Bennett was sleeping, and put the pistol by his hand. Then he came back and turned over the body of the dead man, looking down into the face. Taking one of three cigars from his waistcoat pocket, he lit it, being careful to put the match in the box whence he had taken it. He liked smoking cigars—especially other men’s cigars. Then, without haste, he walked back the way he had come, gained the main road after a careful reconnaissance, and reached the car he had left by the roadside.

  Inside the car a youth was sitting in the shelter of the curtained hood, loose-mouthed, glassy-eyed, staring at nothing. He wore an ill-fitting suit and one end of his collar was unfastened.

  “You know this place, Bill?”

  “Yes, sir.” The voice was guttural and hoarse. “Ibbley Copse.”

  “You have just killed a man: you shot him, just as you said you did in your confession.”

  The half-witted youth nodded.

  “I killed him because I hated him,” he said.

  The Frog nodded obediently and got into the driver’s seat…

  John Bennett woke with a start. He looked at the damp bell-push in his hand with a rueful smile, and began winding up the flex. Presently he reached the bush where the camera was concealed, and, to his dismay, found that the indicator showed the loss—for loss it was—of five hundred feet. He looked at the badger hole resentfully, and there, as in mockery, he saw again the tip of a black nose, and shook his fist at it. Beyond, he saw two men lying, both asleep, and both, apparently, tramps.

  He carried the camera back to where he had left his coat, put it on, hoisted the box into position and set off for Laverstock village, where, if his watch was right, he could catch the local that would connect him with Bath in time for the London express; and as he walked, he calculated his loss.

  XXXI - THE CHEMICAL CORPORATION

  Elk had promised to dine at Gordon’s club. Dick waited for him until twenty minutes past the hour of appointment, and Elk had neither telephoned nor put in an appearance. At twenty-five minutes past he arrived in a hurry.

  “Good Lord!” he gasped, looking at the clock. “.I had no idea it was so late, Captain. I must buy a watch.”

  They went into the dining-hall together, and Elk felt that he was entering a church, there was such solemn dignity about the stately room, with its prim and silent diners.

  “It certainly has Heron’s beat in the matter of Dicky-Orum.”

  “I don’t know the gentleman,” said the puzzled Dick. “Oh, do you mean decorum? Yes, this is a little more sedate. What kept you, Elk? I’m not complaining, but when you’re not on time, I worry as to what has happened to you.”

  “Nothing has happened to me,” said Elk, nodding pleasantly to an embarrassed club waiter. “Only we had an inquiry in Gloucester. I thought we’d struck another Frog case, but the two men involved had no Frog marks.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Phenan is one—he’s the man that’s dead.”

  “A murder?”

  “I think so,” said Elk, spearing a sardine. “I think he was thoroughly dead when they found him at Ibbley Copse. They pinched the man who was with him; he was drunk. Apparently they’d been to Laverstock and had quarrelled and fought in the bar of the Red Lion. The police were informed later, and telephoned through to the next village, to tell the constable to keep his eye on these two fellows, but they hadn’t passed through, so they sent a bicycle patrol to look for them—there’s been one or two housebreakings in that neighbourhood.”

  “And they found them?”

  Elk nodded.

  “One man dead and the other man bottled. Apparently they’d quarrelled, and the drunken gentleman shot the other. They’re both tramps or of that class. Identification marks on them show they’ve come from Wales. They slept at Bath last night, at Rooney’s lodging-house, and that’s all that’s known of ‘em. Carter is the murderer—they’ve taken him to Gloucester Gaol. It’s a very simple case, and the Gloucester police gave a haughty smile at the idea of calling in Headquarters. It is a crime, anyway, that is up to the intellectual level of the country police.”

  Dick’s lips twitched.

  “Just now, the country police are passing unpleasant comments on our intelligence,” he said.

  “Let ‘um,” scoffed Elk. “Those people are certainly entitled to their simple pleasures, and I’d be the last to deny them the right. I saw John Bennett in town to-night, at Paddington this time. I’m always knocking against him at railway stations. That man is certainly a traveller. He had his old camera with him too. I spoke to him this time, and he’s full of trouble; went to sleep, pushed the gadget in his dreams and wasted a fortune in film. But he’s pleased with himself, and I don’t wonder. I saw a note about his pictures the other day in one of the newspapers. He looks like turning into a first-class success.”

  “I sincerely hope so,” said Dick quietly, and something in his tone made his guest look up.

  “Which reminds me,” he said, “that I had a note from friend Johnson asking me whether I knew Ray Bennett’s address. He said he called up Heron’s Club, but-Ray hadn’t been there for days. He wants to give him a job. Quite a big position, too. There’s a lot that’s very fine in Johnson.”

  “Did you give the address?”

  Elk nodded.

  “I gave him the address, and I called on the boy, but he’s out of town—went out a few days ago, and is not likely to be back for a fortnight. It will be too bad if he loses this job. I think Johnson was sore with the side young Bennett put on, but he doesn’t seem to bear any malice. Perhaps there’s another influence at work,” he said significantly.

  Dick knew that he meant Ella, but did not accept the opening.

  They adjourned to the smoke-room after dinner, and whilst Elk puffed luxuriously at one of his host’s best cigars, Dick wrote a brief note to the girl, who had been in his thoughts all that day. It was an unnecessary note, as such epistles are liable to be; but it might have had, as its excuse, the news that he had heard from Elk, only, for some reason, he never thought of that until after the letter was finished and sealed. When he turned to his companion, Elk propounded a theory.

  “I sent a man up to look at some chemical works. It’s a fake company—less than a dozen hands employed, and those only occasionally. But it has a very powerful electrical installation. It is an old poison gas factory. The present company bought it for a song, and two fellows we are holding were the nominal purchasers.”

  “Where is it?” aske
d Dick.

  “Between Newbury and Didcot. I found out a great deal about them for a curious reason. It appears there was some arrangement between the factory, when it was under Government control, that it should make an annual contribution to the Newbury Fire Brigade, and, in taking over the property, the company also took over that contract, which they’re now trying to get out of, for the charge is a stiff one. They told the Newbury Brigade, in so many words, to disconnect the factory from their alarm service, but the Newbury Brigade, being on a good thing and having lost money by the arrangement during the war, refused to cancel the contract, which has still three years to run.”

  Dick was not interested in the slightest degree in the quarrel between the chemical factory and the fire brigade. Later, he had cause to be thankful that conversation had drifted into such a prosaic channel; but this he could not foresee.

  “Yes, very remarkable,” he said absent-mindedly.

  * * * * *

  A fortnight after the disappearance from town of Ray Bennett, Elk accepted the invitation of the American to lunch. It was an invitation often given, and only accepted now because there had arisen in Elk’s mind a certain doubt about Joshua Broad—a doubt which he wished to mould into assurance.

  Broad was waiting for the detective when he ‘arrived, and Elk, to whom time had no particular significance, arrived ten minutes late.

  “Ten minutes after one,” said Elk. “I can’t keep on time anyhow. There’s been a lot of trouble at the office over the new safe they’ve got me. Somethin’s wrong with it, and even the lock-maker doesn’t know what it is.”

  “Can’t you open it?”

  “That’s just it, I can’t, and I’ve got to get some papers out to-day that are mighty important,” said Elk. “I was wondering, as I came along, whether, having such a wide experience of the criminal classes, you’ve ever heard any way by which it could be opened—it needs a proper engineer, and, if I remember rightly, you told me you were an engineer once, Mr. Broad?”

  “Your memory is at fault,” said the other calmly as he unfolded his napkin and regarded the detective with a twinkle in his eye. “Safe-opening is not my profession.”

  “And I never dreamt it was,” said Elk heartily. “But it has always struck me that the Americans are much more clever with their hands than the people in this country, and I thought that you might be able to give me a word of advice.”

  “Maybe I’ll introduce you to my pet burglar,” said Broad gravely, and they laughed together. “What do you think of me?” asked the American unexpectedly. “I’m not expecting you to give your view of my character or personal appearance, but what do you think I am doing in London, dodging around, doing nothing but a whole lot of amateur police work?”

  “I’ve never given you much thought,” said Elk untruthfully. “Being an American, I expect you to be out of the ordinary—”

  “Flatterer,” murmured Mr. Broad.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to flatter you,” protested Elk. “Flattery is repugnant to me anyway.”

  He unfolded an evening newspaper he had brought. “Looking for those tailless amphibians?”

  “Eh?” Elk looked up puzzled.

  “Frogs,” explained the other.

  “No, I’m not exactly looking for Frogs, though I understand a few of ‘em are looking for me. As a matter of fact, there’s very little in the newspaper about those interesting animals, but there’s going to be!”

  “When?”

  The question was a challenge.

  “When we get Frog Number One.”

  Mr. Broad crumpled a roll in his hand, and broke it.

  “Do you think you’ll get Number One before I get him?” he asked quietly, and Elk looked across the table over his spectacles.

  “I’ve been wondering that for a long time,” he said, and for a second their eyes met.

  “Do you think I shall get him?” asked Broad.

  “If all my speculations and surmises are what they ought to be, I think you will,” said Elk, and suddenly his attention was focussed upon a paragraph. “Quick work,” he said. “We beat you Americans in that respect.”

  “In what respect is that?” asked Broad. “I’m sufficient of a cosmopolitan to agree that there are many things in England which you do better than we in America.”

  Elk looked up at the ceiling.

  “Fifteen days?” he said. “Of course, he just managed to catch the Assizes.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “That man Carter, who shot a tramp near Gloucester,” said Elk.

  “What has happened to him?” asked the other.

  “He was sentenced to death this morning,” said the detective.

  Joshua Broad frowned.

  “Sentenced to death this morning? Carter, you say? I didn’t read the story of the murder.”

  “There was nothing complicated about it,” said Elk. “Two tramps had a quarrel—I think they got drinking—and one shot the other and was found lying in a drunken sleep by the dead man’s side. There’s practically no evidence; the prisoner refused to make any statement, or to instruct a lawyer—it must have been one of the shortest murder trials on record.”

  “Where did this happen?” asked Broad, arousing himself from the reverie into which he had fallen.

  “Near Gloucester. There was little in the paper; it wasn’t a really interesting murder. There was no woman in it, so far as the evidence went, and who cared a cent about two tramps?”

  He folded the paper and put it down, and for the rest of the meal was engaged in a much more fascinating discussion, the police methods of the United States, on which matter Mr. Broad was, apparently, something of an authority.

  The object of the American’s invitation was very apparent. Again and again he attempted to turn the conversation to the man under arrest; and as skilfully as he introduced the subject of Balder, did Elk turn the discussion back to the merits of the third degree as a method of crime detection.

  “Elk, you’re as close as an oyster,” said Broad, beckoning a waiter to bring his bill. “And yet I could tell you almost as much about this man Balder as you know.”

  “Tell me the prison he’s in?” demanded Elk.

  “He’s in Pentonville, Ward Seven, Cell Eighty-four,” said the other immediately, and Elk sat bolt upright. “And you needn’t trouble to shift him to somewhere else, just because I happen to know his exact location; I should be just as well informed if he was at Brixton, Wandsworth, Holloway, Wormwood Scrubbs, Maidstone, or Chelmsford.”

  XXXII - IN GLOUCESTER PRISON

  There is a cell in Gloucester Prison; the end cell in a long corridor of the old building. Next door is another cell, which is never occupied, for an excellent reason. That in which Ray Bennett sat was furnished more expensively than any other in the prison. There was an iron bedstead, a plain deal table, a comfortable Windsor chair and two other chairs, on one of which, night and day, sat a warder.

  The walls were distempered pink. One big window, near the ceiling, heavily barred, covered with toughened opaque glass, admitted light, which was augmented all the time by an electric globe in the arched ceiling.

  Three doors led from the cell: one into the corridor, the other into a little annexe fitted with a washing-bowl and a bath; the third into the unoccupied cell, which had a wooden floor, and in the centre of the floor a square trap. Ray Bennett did not know then how close he was to the death house, and if he had known he would not have cared. For death was the least of the terrors which oppressed him.

  He had awakened from his drugged sleep, to find himself in the cell of a country lock-up, and had heard, bemused, the charge of murder that had been made against him. He had no clear recollection of what had happened. All that he knew was that he had hated Lew Brady and that he had wanted to kill him. After that, he had a recollection of walking with him and of sitting down somewhere.

  They told him that Brady was dead, and that the weapon with which the murder was committed had been
found in his hand. Ray had racked his brains in an effort to remember whether he had a revolver or not. He must have had. And of course he had been drugged. They had had whisky at the Red Lion, and Lew must have said something about Lola and he had shot him. It was strange that he did not think longingly of Lola. His love for her had gone. He thought of her as he thought of Lew Brady, as something unimportant that belonged to the past. All that mattered now was that his father and Ella should not know. At all costs the disgrace must be kept from them. He had waited in a fever of impatience for the trial to end, so that he might get away from the public gaze. Fortunately, the murder was not of sufficient interest even for the ubiquitous press photographers. He wanted to be done with it all, to go out of life unknown. The greatest tragedy that could occur to him was that he should be identified.

  He dared not think of Ella or of his father. He was Jim Carter, without parents or friends; and if he died as Jim Carter, he must spend his last days of life as Jim Carter. He was not frightened; he had no fear, his only nightmare was that he should be recognized.

  The warder who was with him, and who was not supposed to speak to him, had told him that, by the law, three clear Sundays must elapse between his sentence and execution. The chaplain visited him every day, and the Governor. A tap at the cell door told him it was the Governor’s hour, and he rose as the grey-haired official carne in.

  “Any complaints, Carter?”

  “None, sir.”

  “Is there anything you want?”

  “No, sir.”

  The Governor looked at the table. The writing-pad, which had been placed for the condemned prisoner’s use, had not been touched.

  “You have no letters to write? I suppose you can write?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve no letters to write.”

  “What are you, Carter? You’re not an ordinary tramp. You’re better educated than that class.”

  “I’m an ordinary tramp, sir,” said Ray quietly.