Elk 01 The Fellowship of the Frog

by Edgar Wallace

“Hagn,” said a deep voice, and the Frog took a startled step backward. “Quick! Open!”

  The mask turned the heavy bar, and, taking a key from his pocket, he drew back the lock.

  “Hagn, how did you get away?”

  The door was pushed open with such violence that he was flung back against the wall, and Ella uttered a scream of joy.

  Standing in the doorway was a bareheaded man, in a shining trench-coat. It was Joshua Broad.

  “Keep back!”

  He did not look round, but she knew the words were addressed to her and stood stock-still. Both Broad’s hands were in the deep pockets of his coat; his eyes did not leave the mask.

  “Harry,” he said softly, “you know what I want.”

  “Take yours!” screeched the Frog. His hand moved so quickly that the girl could not follow it.

  Two shots rang out together and the Frog staggered back against the wall. His foot was within a few inches of the glass cylinders, and he raised it. Again Broad fired, and the Frog fell backward, his head in the fireplace. He came struggling to his feet, and then, with a little choking sob, fell backward, his arms outstretched.

  There was a sound of voices outside, a scraping of feet on the muddy path, and John Bennett came into the hut. In a moment the girl was in his arms. Broad looked round. Elk and Dick Gordon were standing in the doorway, taking in the scene.

  “Gentlemen,” said Joshua Broad, “I call you to witness that I killed this man in self-defence.”

  “Who is it?” said Dick.

  “It is the Frog,” said Joshua Broad calmly. “His other name is Harry Lyme. He is an English convict.”

  “I knew it was Harry Lyme.” It was Elk who spoke. “Is he dead?”

  Broad stooped and thrust his hand under the man’s waistcoat.

  “Yes, he is dead,” he announced simply. “I’m sorry that I have robbed you of your prey, Mr. Elk, but it was vitally necessary that he should be killed before I was, and one of us had to die this night!”

  Elk knelt by the still figure and began to unfasten the hideous rubber mask.

  “It was here that Genter was killed,” said Dick Gordon in a low voice. “Do you see the gas?”

  Elk looked at the glass cylinders and nodded. Then his eyes came back to the bareheaded American.

  “Saul Morris, I believe?” he said, and “Joshua Broad” nodded.

  Elk pursed his lips thoughtfully, and his eyes went back to the still figure at his feet.

  “Now, Frog, let me see you,” he said, and tore away the mask.

  He looked down into the face of Philosopher Johnson!

  XLII - JOSHUA BROAD EXPLAINS

  The sunlight was pouring through the windows of Maytree Cottage; the breakfast things still stood upon the table, when the American began his story.

  “My name, as you rightly surmised, Mr. Elk, is Saul Morris. I am, by all moral standards, a criminal, though I have not been guilty of any criminal practice for the past ten years. I was born at Hertford in Connecticut.

  “I am not going to offer you an apology, conventional or unconventional, for my ultimate choice; nor will I insult your intelligence by inviting sympathy for my first fail. I guess I was born with light fingers and a desire for money that I had not earned. I was not corrupted, I was not tempted, I had no evil companions; in fact, the beginnings of my career were singularly unlike any of the careers of criminals which I have ever read.

  “I studied bank robberies as a doctor might take up the study of anatomy. I understand perfectly every system of banking—and there are only two, one of which succeeds, the other produces a plentiful crop of fraudulent directors—and I have added to this a knowledge of lockcraft. A burglar who starts business without understanding the difficulties and obstacles he has to overcome is—to use the parallel I have already employed—like the doctor who starts off to operate without knowing what arteries, tissues and nerves he will be severing. The difference between a surgeon and a butcher is that one doesn’t know the name of the tissues he is cutting!

  “When I decided upon my career, I served for five years in the factory of the greatest English safe-maker in Wolverhampton. I studied locks, safes, the tensile qualities of steel, until I was proficient, and my spare time I gave up to as important a study—the transportation of negotiable currency. That in itself is a study which might well occupy a man s full time.

  “I returned to America at the age of twenty-five, and accumulated a kit of tools, which cost me several thousand dollars, and with these, and alone, I smashed the Ninth National Bank, getting away, on my first attempt, with three hundred thousand dollars. I will not give you a long list of my many crimes; some of them I have conveniently forgotten. Others are too unimportant, and contain too many disappointments to tell you in detail. It is sufficient to say that there is no proof, other than my word, that I was responsible for any of these depredations. My name has only been associated with one—the robbery of the strongroom on the Mantania.

  “In 1898 I learnt that the Mantania was carrying to France fifty-five million francs in paper currency. The money was packed in two stout wooden cases, and before being packed, was submitted to hydraulic pressure in order to reduce the bulk. In one case were thirty-five packets, each containing a thousand mille notes, and in the second case twenty packets. I particularly want you to remember that there were two cases, because you will understand a little better what happened subsequently.

  “It was intended that the ship should call at a French port; I think it was Havre, because the trans-Atlantic boats in those days did not call at Cherbourg. I had made all my plans for getting away with the stuff, and the robbery had actually been committed and the boxes were in my cabin trunk, substitute boxes of an exact shape having been left in the strongroom of the Mantania, when to my dismay we lost a propeller blade whilst off the coast of Ireland, and the captain of the Mantania decided to put in to Southampton without making the French port.

  “A change of plans, to a man of my profession, is almost as embarrassing as a change of plan in the middle of a battle. I had on this occasion an assistant—a man who afterwards died in delirium tremens. It was absolutely impossible to work alone; the job was too big, and my assistant was a man I had every reason to trust.”

  “Harry Lyme?” suggested Elk.

  “Joshua Broad” shook his head.

  “No, you’re wrong. I will not tell you his name—the man is dead, and he was a very faithful arid loyal fellow, though inclined to booze, a weakness which I never shared. However, the reason we were so embarrassed was that, had we gone ashore at the French port, the robbery in the strongroom would not have been discovered, because it was unlikely that the purser would go to the strongroom until the ship was in Southampton Water. I had fixed everything, the passing of my bags through the Customs being the most important. This change meant that we must improvise a method to get ashore at Southampton before the hue and cry was raised, and, if possible, before the robbery was discovered, though it did not seem possible that we should succeed.

  “Fortunately, there was a fog in the Solent, and we had to go dead slow; and, if you remember the circumstances, as the Mantania came up the Solent, she collided with a steam dredger that was going into Portsmouth. The dredger’s foremast became entangled in the bowsprit of the Mantania and it was some time before they were extricated. It was then that I seized my opportunity. From an open port-way on my deck, where we were waiting with our baggage, ready to land, we were level with the side of the dredger as she swung round under the impact. I flung the two grips that held the boxes on to the dredger’s deck, and I and my friend jumped together.

  “As I say, a fog lay on the water, and we were not seen, and not discovered by the crew of the dredger until we had parted company with the Mantania, and although the story we told to the dredger’s captain was the thinnest imaginable—namely, that we thought it was a tender that had come off to collect us—he very readily accepted it, and the twenty-dollar bill which I ga
ve him.

  “We made Portsmouth after a great deal of difficulty late in the evening. There was no Customs inspection and we got our bags safely on land. I intended staying the night at Portsmouth, but after we had taken our lodgings, my friend and I went round to a little bar to get a drink, and there we heard something which sent us back to our rooms at full pelt. What we heard was that the robbery had been discovered, and that the police were looking for two men who had made their escape on the dredger. As it was the dredger’s captain who had recommended our lodgings, I had little expectation of getting into the room and out again without capture.

  “However, we did, and as we passed out of the street at one end, the police came in at the other. I carried one bag, my friend the lighter, and we started on foot across country, and before the morning we had reached a place called Eastleigh. It was to Eastleigh, you will remember, Mr. Elk, that I came when I left the cattle-boat during the war and suddenly changed my character from a hard-up cattle-puncher to a wealthy gambler at Monte Carlo.

  “That matter I will explain later. When we reached Eastleigh, I had a talk with my companion, and it was a pretty straight talk, because he’d got a load of liquor on board and was becoming more and more unreliable. It ended by his going into the town to buy some food and not returning. When I went in search of him, I found him lying in the street, incapably drunk. There was nothing to do but to leave him; and getting a little food, I took the two bags and struck the road. The bags, however, were much too heavy for, me, and I had to consider my position.

  “Standing by the road was an old cottage, and on a board was an announcement that it was to be sold. I took the address; it was the name of a Winchester lawyer; and then I got over the fence and made an inspection of the ground, to find that, at the lower end of the rank garden, was an old, disused well, boarded over by rotten planks. I could in safety drop the lighter of my burdens down the well and cover it up with the rubble, of which there was plenty around. I might have buried both; in many ways a lot of trouble would have been saved if I had. But I was loth to leave all that I had striven for with such care and pains, and I took the second box on with me, reached Winchester, bought a change of clothing, and spent a comfortable day there, interviewing the lawyer, who owned the cottage.

  “I had some English money with me, and the purchase was effected. I gave strict instructions that the place was not to be let in any circumstances, and that it was to remain as it was until I came back from Australia—I posed as a wealthy Australian who was repurchasing the house in which he was born.

  “From Winchester I reached London, never dreaming that I was in any danger. My companion had given me the name of an English crook, an acquaintance of his, who, he said, was the finest safe-man in Europe—a man who was called ‘Lyme’ and who, I discovered many years after, was the same Harry Lyme. He told me Lyme would help me in any emergency.

  “And that emergency soon arose. The first man I saw when I put my foot on the platform at Waterloo was the purser of the Mantania, and with him was the ship’s detective. I dodged back, and, fortunately for me, there was a suburban train leaving from the opposite platform, and I went on to Surbiton, reaching London by another route. Afterwards, I learnt that my companion had been arrested, and in his half-drunken state had told all he knew. The thing to do now was to cache the remainder of the money—thirty-five million francs. I immediately thought of Harry Lyme. I have never suffered from the illusion that there is honour amongst thieves. My own experience is that that is one of the most stupid of proverbs. But I thought that at least I might make it worth Lyme’s while to help me out of a mess.

  “I learnt from the newspapers that there was a special force of police looking for me, and that they were watching the houses of well-known criminals, to whom, they thought, I might gravitate. At first I thought this was a bluff, but I was to discover that this was not the case. I reached Lyme’s house, in a disreputable thoroughfare in Camden Town. The fog was thick and yellow, and I had some difficulty in finding my way. It was a small house in a mean, squalid street, and at first I could get no reply to my knocking. Then the door was opened cautiously.

  “‘Is that Lyme?’ I asked. ‘He’s not at home,’ said a man, and he would have shut the door, but my instinct told me this was the fellow I was seeking, and I put my foot in the way of the closing door. ‘Come in,’ he said at last, and led the way into a small room, the only light of which was a lantern which stood on the table. The room was thick with fog, for the window was open, as I learnt afterwards, to allow Lyme to make his escape.

  “‘Are you the American?’ he asked. ‘You’re mad to come here. The police have been watching this place ever since this afternoon.’ I told him briefly what my difficulty was. ‘I have here thirty-five million francs—that’s a million, three hundred thousand pounds,’ said I, ‘and there’s enough for both of us. Can you plant this whilst I make a getaway?’ ‘Yes, I will,’ he said. ‘What do I get out of it?’ ‘I’ll give you half,’ I promised, and he seemed to be satisfied with that.

  “I was surprised that he spoke in the voice and tone of an educated man, and I learnt afterwards that he also had been intended for some profession, and, like myself, had chosen the easier way. Now, you’ll not believe me when I tell you that I did not see his face, and that I carried no very vivid impression away with me. This is due to the fact that I concentrated my attention upon the frog which was tattooed on his wrist, and which afterwards, at great expense, he succeeded in having removed by a Spanish doctor it Valladolid, who specialized in that kind of work. That frog was tattooed a little askew, and I knew, and he knew too, that, whether I remembered his face or not, he had a mark which was certain to guide me back to him.

  “The arrangement I made was that, when I got back to America, I should send a cable to him, at an address we agreed upon, and that he was then to send me, by registered post to the Grand Hotel, Montreal, a half of the money he had in the box. To cut a long story short, I made my escape, and eventually reached the Continent by way of Hook of Holland. Encumbered with any baggage, that would have been impossible. In due course I left for the United States from Bremen, Germany, and immediately on my arrival sent the cable to Lyme, and went up to Montreal to await the arrival of the money. It did not come. I cabled again; still it did not come.

  “It was months after that I learnt what had happened. It came from a cutting of a newspaper, saying that Lyme had been drowned on his way to Guernsey. How he sent that, I don’t know and never have inquired. Lyme was, in fact, very much alive. He had some six million dollars’ worth of French notes, and his job was to negotiate them. His first step was to move to a Midland town, where for six months he posed as a man of business, in the meantime changing his whole appearance, shaving off his moustache and producing an artificial baldness by the application of some chemical.

  “Whilst he was doing this, and determined that every penny he had taken from me he would hold, he decided to make assurance doubly sure, and started in a small way the Fellowship of the Frog. The object of this was to spread the mark of identification by which I should know him, as far and wide as possible. He may have had no other idea in his mind, and probably had not, but to broadcast this mark of the frog, a little askew, the exact replica of his. Obviously no class would be willing to suffer the tortures of tattooing for nothing. So began this curious Benefit Fund of his. From this little beginning grew the great Frog organization. Almost one of the first men he came into contact with was an old criminal named Maitland, a man who could neither read nor write.”

  There was a gasp.

  “Why, of course!” said Elk, and smacked his knee impatiently. “That is the explanation of the baby!”

  “There never was a baby,” smiled ‘Broad.’ “The baby was Maitland himself, learning to write. The clothes of the baby, which were planted for your special benefit in the Eldor Street house, were put there by Johnson. The toys for the baby were inventions to keep you guessing. There never was
a baby. Once he had Maitland properly coached, he came to London, and Maitiands Consolidated was formed. Maitland had nothing to do except to sit around and look picturesque. His alleged clerk, one of the cleverest actors I have ever met, was the real head of the business, and remained Maitland’s clerk just as long as it suited him. When he thought suspicion was veering toward him, he had himself dismissed; just as, when he thought you had identified him with the Frog, he made one of his men shoot at him with a blank cartridge in Harley Terrace. He was the real Maitland.

  “In the meantime the Frog organization was growing, and he sat down to consider how best he could use the society for his advantage. Money was going out, and he naturally hated to see it go. New recruits were appearing every day, and they all cost money. But what he did get from this rabble were one or two brilliant minds. Balder was one, Hagn was one, and there were others, who perhaps will now never be known.

  “As the controlling force of Maitlands Consolidated, he had not the slightest difficulty in disposing of his francs. And then he set Maitlands speculating in other directions, and when his speculations were failing, he found ways of cutting his loss. He was once caught short in a wool transaction—the Frog maimed the only man who could have ruined him. Whenever he found it expedient for the benefit of himself to club a man, whether he was a military attache or a very plain City merchant speculating in his own stocks, Johnson never hesitated. People who were bothering him were put beyond the opportunities of mischief. He made one great mistake. He allowed Maitland to live like a hog in a house he had bought. That was folly. When he found that the old man had been trailed, he shifted him to Berkeley Square, got him tailored, and eventually murdered him for daring to go to Horsham. I saw the murderer escape, for I was on the roof when the shots were fired. Incidentally, I had a narrow escape myself.

  “But to return to my own narrative. Five years ago I was broke, and I decided to have another attempt to get my money; and there was also the fact that a very large sum of money waited reclaiming at Eastleigh, always providing that I had not been identified as the man who bought the house. It took me a long time before I made absolutely certain that I was unknown, and then, with the title deeds in my pocket, I sailed on a cattle-boat and landed, as you have said, Mr. Elk, with a few dollars in my pocket, at Southampton. I went straight to the house, which was now in a shocking state of repair, and there I made myself as comfortable as I possibly could whilst, night after night, I toiled in the well to recover the small box of money, amounting to a very considerable sum. When this was recovered, I left for Paris, and the rest, so far as my public history is concerned, you know.