Elk 01 The Fellowship of the Frog (32 page)

“Well, Captain Gordon, did you get it?” he asked.

“I got it,” said Dick solemnly, waving an envelope. “You’re the first cinematographer that has been allowed in the Zoological Gardens, and I had to crawl to the powers that be to secure the permission!”

The pale face of John Bennett flushed with pleasure.

“It is a tremendous thing,” he said. “The Zoo has never been put on the pictures, and Selinski has promised me a fabulous sum for the film if I can take it.”

“The fabulous sum is in your pocket, Mr. Bennett,” said Dick, “and I am glad that you mentioned it.”

“I am under the impression you mentioned it first,” said John Bennett. Ella did not remember having seen her father smile before.

“Perhaps I did,” said Dick cheerfully. “I knew you were interested in animal photography.”

He did not tell John Bennett that it was Ella who had first spoken about the difficulties of securing Zoo photographs and her father’s inability to obtain the necessary permission.

John Bennett went back to his labelling with a lighter heart than he had borne for many a day. He wrote the two slips, wetted the gum and hesitated. Then he laid down the papers and went into the garden.

“Ella, do you remember which of those boxes had the trout in?”

“The one in your right hand, daddy,” she said.

“I thought so,” he said, and went to finish his work.

It was only after the boxes were labelled that he had any misgivings. Where had he stood when he put them down? On which side of the table? Then, with a shrug, he began to wrap the trout picture, and they saw him carrying it under his arm to the village post-office.

“No news of Ray?” asked Dick.

The girl shook her head.

“What does your father think?”

“He doesn’t talk about Ray, and I haven’t emphasized the fact that it is such a long time since I had a letter.”

They were strolling through the garden toward the little summer-house that John Bennett had built in the days when Ray was a schoolboy.

“You have not heard?” she asked. “I credit you with an omniscience which perhaps isn’t deserved. You have not found the man who killed Mr. Maitland?”

“No,” said Dick. “I don’t expect we shall until we catch Frog himself.”

“Will you?” she asked quietly.

He nodded.

“Yes, he can’t go on for ever. Even Elk is taking a cheerful view. Ella,” he asked suddenly, “are you the kind of person who keeps a promise?”

“Yes,” she said in surprise, “In all circumstances, if you make a promise, do you keep it?”

“Why, of course. If I do not think I can keep it, I do not make a promise. Why?”

“Well, I want you to make me a promise—and to keep it,” he said.

She looked past him, and then:

“It depends what the promise is.”

“I want you to promise to be my wife,” said Dick Gordon.

Her hand lay in his, and she did not draw it from him.

“It is…very…businesslike, isn’t it?” she said, biting her unruly underlip.

“Will you promise?”

She looked round at him, tears in her eyes, though her lips were smiling, and he caught her in his arms.

John Bennett waited a long time for his lunch that day. Going out to see where his daughter was, he met Dick, and in a few words Dick Gordon told him all. He saw the pain in the man’s face, and dropped his hand upon the broad shoulder.

“Ella has promised me, and she will not go back on her promise. Whatever happens, whatever she learns.”

The man raised his eyes to the other’s face.

“Will you go back on your promise?” he asked huskily. “Whatever you learn?

“I know,” said Dick simply.

Ella Bennett walked on air that day. A new and splendid colour had come into her life; a tremendous certainty which banished all the fears and doubts she had felt; a light which revealed delightful vistas.

Her father went over to Dorking that afternoon, and came back hurriedly, wearing that strained look which it hurt her to see.

“I shall have to go to town, dearie,” he said. “There’s been a letter waiting for me for two days. I’ve been so absorbed in my picture work that I’d forgotten I had any other responsibility.”

He did not look for her in the garden to kiss her goodbye, and when she came back to the house he was gone, and in such a hurry that he had not taken his camera with him.

Ella did not mind being alone; in the days when Ray was at home, she had spent many nights in the cottage by herself, and the house was on the main road. She made some tea and sat down to write to Dick, though she told herself reprovingly that he hadn’t been gone more than two or three hours. Nevertheless, she wrote, for the spirit of logic avoids the lover.

There was a postal box a hundred yards up the road; it was a bright night and people were standing at their cottage gates, gossipping, as she passed. The letter dropped in the box, she came back to the cottage, went inside, locked and bolted the door, and sat down with a workbasket by her side to fill in the hour which separated her from bedtime.

So working, her mind was completely occupied, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, by Dick Gordon. Once or twice the thought of her father and Ray strayed across her mind, but it was to Dick she returned.

The only illumination in the cosy dining-room was a shaded kerosene lamp which stood on the table by her side and gave her sufficient light for her work. All outside the range of the lamp was shadow. She had finished darning a pair of her father’s socks, and had laid down the needle with a happy sigh, when her eyes went to the door leading to the kitchen. It was ajar, and it was opening slowly.

For a moment she sat paralysed with terror, and then leapt to her feet.

“Who’s there?” she called.

There carne into the shadowy doorway a figure, the very sight of which choked the scream in her throat. It looked tall, by reason of the tightly-fitting black coat it wore. The face and head were hidden behind a hideous mask of rubber and mica. The reflection of the lamp shone on the big goggles and filled them with a baleful fire.

“Don’t scream, don’t move!” said the masked man, and his voice sounded hollow and far away. “I will not hurt you.”

“Who are you?” she managed to gasp.

“I am The Frog,” said the stranger.

For an eternity, as it seemed, she stood helpless, incapable of movement, and it was he who spoke.

“How many men love you, Ella Bennett?” he asked. “Gordon and Johnson—and The Frog, who loves you most of all!”

He paused, as though he expected her to speak, but she was incapable of answering him.

“Men work for women, and they murder for women, and behind all that they do, respectably or unrespectably, there is a woman,” said the Frog. “And you are that woman for me, Ella.”

“Who are you?” she managed to say.

“I am The Frog,” he replied again, “and you shall know my name when I have given it to you. I want you! Not now “—he raised his hand as he saw the terror rising in her face. “You shall come to me willingly.”

“You’re mad!” she cried. “I do not know you. How can I—oh, it’s too wicked to suggest…please go away.”

“I will go presently,” said the Frog. “Will you marry me Ella?”

She shook her head.

“Will you marry me, Ella?” he asked again.

“No.” She had recovered her calm and something of her self-possession. “I will give you—”

“If you gave me all the money there was in the world, I would not marry you,” she said.

“I will give you something more precious.” His voice was softer, scarcely audible. “I will give you a life!”

She thought he was speaking of Dick Gordon.

“I will give you the life of your brother.”

“For a second the room spun round and she clutched a chair to keep her feet.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I will give you the life of your brother, who is lying in Gloucester Gaol under sentence of death!” said the Frog. With a supreme effort Ella guided herself to a chair and sat down.

“My brother?” she said dully. “Under sentence of death?”

“To-day is Monday,” said the Frog. “On Wednesday he dies. Give me your word that when I send for you, you will come, and I will save him.”

“How can you save him?” The question came mechanically.

“A man has made a confession—a man named Gill, a half-witted fellow who thinks he killed Lew Brady.”

“Brady?” she gasped.

The Frog nodded.

“It isn’t true,” she breathed. “You’re lying! You’re telling me this to frighten me.”

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

“Never, never!” she cried. “I would rather die. You are lying to me.”

“When you want me, send for me,” said the Frog. “Put in your window a white card, and I will save your brother.”

She half lay on the table, her head upon her folded arms.

“It’s not true, it’s not true,” she muttered.

There was no reply, and, looking up, she saw that the room was empty. Staggering to her feet, she went out into the kitchen. The kitchen door was open; and, peering into the dark garden, she saw no sign of the man. She had strength to bolt the door, and dragged herself up to her room and to her bed, and then she fainted.

Daylight showed in the windows when she sat up. She was painfully weary, her eyes were red with weeping, her head was in a whirl. It had been a night of horror—and it was not true, it could not be true. She had heard of no murder; and if there had been, it could not be Ray. She would have known; Ray would have sent for her father.

She dragged her aching limbs to the bathroom and turned the cold-water tap. Half an hour later she was sane, and looking at her experience dispassionately. Ray was alive. The man had tried to frighten her. Who was he? She shivered.

She saw only one solution to her terrible problem, and after she had made herself a cup of tea, she dressed and walked down into the town, in time to catch an early train. What other thought came to her, she never dreamt for one moment of surrender, never so much as glanced at the window where a white card could be placed, might save the life of her brother. In her heart of hearts, she knew that this man would not have come to her with such a story unless it was well founded. That was not the Frog’s way. What advantage would he gain if he had invented this tragedy? Nevertheless, she did not even look for a white card, or think of its possible use.

Dick was at breakfast when she arrived, and a glance at her face told him that she brought bad news.

“Don’t go, Mr. Elk,” she said as the inspector pushed back his chair. “You must know this.”

As briefly as she could, she narrated the events of the night before, and Dick listened with rising wrath until she came to the climax of the story.

“Ray under sentence?” he said incredulously. “Of course it isn’t true.”

“Where did he say the boy was?” asked Elk. “In Gloucester Prison.”

In their presence her reserve had melted and she was near to tears.

“Gloucester Prison?” repeated Elk slowly. “There is a man there under sentence of death, a man named,”–he strove to remember—“Carter,” he said at last. “That is it—Carter, a tramp. He killed another tramp named Phenan.”

“Of course it isn’t Ray,” said Dick, laying his hand on hers. “This brute tried to frighten you. When did he say the execution had been fixed for?

“To-morrow.” She was weeping; now that the tension had relaxed, it seemed that she had reached the reserve of her strength.

“Ray is probably on the Continent,” Dick soothed her, and here Elk thought it expedient and delicate to steal silently forth.

He was not as convinced as Gordon that the Frog had made a bluff. No sooner was he in his office than he rang for his new clerk.

“Records,” he said briefly. “I want particulars of a man named Carter, now lying under sentence of death in Gloucester Prison—photograph, fingerprints, and record of the crime.”

The man was gone ten minutes, and returned with a small portfolio.

“No photograph has been received yet, sir,” he said. “In murder cases we do not get the full records from the County police until after the execution.”

Elk cursed the County police fluently, and addressed himself to the examination of the dossier. That told him little or nothing. The height and weight of the man tallied, he guessed, with Ray’s. There were no body marks and the description “Slight beard.”

He sat bolt upright. Slight beard! Ray Bennett had been growing a beard for some reason. He remembered that Broad had told him this.

“Pshaw!” he said, throwing down the fingerprint card. “It is impossible!”

It was impossible, and yet—

He drew a telegraph pad toward him and wrote a wire.

“Governor, H.M. Prison, Gloucester. Very urgent. Send by special messenger prison photograph of James Carter under sentence of death in your prison to Headquarters Records. Messenger must leave by first train. Very urgent.”

He took the liberty of signing it with the name of the Chief Commissioner. The telegram despatched, he returned to a scrutiny of the description sheet, and presently he saw a remark which he had overlooked.

“Vaccination marks on right forearm.”

That was unusual. People are usually vaccinated on the left arm, a little below the shoulder. He made a note of this fact and turned to the work that was waiting for him. At noon a wire arrived from Gloucester, saying that the photograph was on its way. That, at least, was satisfactory; though, even if it proved to be Rag, what could be done? In his heart Elk prayed most fervently that the Frog had bluffed.

Just before one, Dick telephoned him and asked him to lunch with them at the Auto Club, an invitation which, in any circumstances, was not to be refused, for Elk had a passion for visiting other people’s clubs.