Elk 01 The Fellowship of the Frog (39 page)

“What are you doing? Who are you?” she asked, and no sooner did the voice of the man before her come to her ears than she knew she was in the power of the Frog.

“I’m going to give you your last chance,” he said. “After to-night that chance is gone.”

She composed the tremor in her voice with an effort, and then:

“What do you mean by my last chance?” she asked.

“You will undertake to marry me, and to leave the country with me in the morning. I’ve such faith in you that I will take your word,” he said.

She shook her head, until she realized that, in the darkness, he could not see her.

“I will never do that,” she answered quietly, and no other word was spoken through the journey. Once, at a whispered word from the man in the mask—she saw the reflection of his mica eye-pieces even though the blinds were drawn, as the car went through some village street—one of the men looked back through the glass in the hood.

“Nothing,” he said.

No violence was offered to her; she was not bound, or restricted in any way, though she knew it was perfectly hopeless for her to dream of escape.

They were running along a dark country road when the car slowed and stopped. The passengers turned out quickly, she was the last. A man caught her arm as she descended and led her, through an opening of the hedge, into what seemed to her to be a ploughed field.

The other came after her, bringing her an oilskin coat and helping her into it.

The rain flogged across the waste, rattling against the oil-coat; she heard the man holding her arm mutter something under his breath. The Frog walked ahead, only looking back once. She slipped and stumbled, and would have often fallen but for the hand which held her up.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked at last.

There was no reply. She wondered if she could wrench herself free, and trust to the cover of darkness to hide her, but even as the thought occurred, she saw a gleam of water to the right—a round, ghostly patch.

“These are Morby Fields,” she said suddenly, recognizing the place. “You’re taking me to the quarry.”

Again no answer. They tramped on doggedly, until she knew they were within measurable distance of the quarry itself. She wondered what would be her fate when she finally refused, as she would refuse. Did this terrible man intend to kill her?

“Wait,” said the Frog suddenly, and disappeared into the gloom.

Then she saw a light, which came from a small wooden house; two patches of light, one long, one square—a window and a door. The window disappeared as he closed the shutter. Then his figure stood silhouetted in the doorway.

“Come,” he said, and she went forward.

At the door of the hut she drew back, but the hand on her arm tightened. She was pushed into the interior, and the door was slammed and bolted.

She was alone with Frog. Curiosity overcame her fear. She looked round the little room. It was about ten feet long by six feet broad. The furnishings were simple: a bed, a table, two chairs and a fireplace. The wooden floor was covered by an old and grimy rug. Against one of the walls were piled two shallow wooden boxes, and the wood was new. The mask followed the direction of her eyes and she heard his slow chuckle.

“Money,” he said tersely, “your money and my money, there is a million there.”

She looked, fascinated. Near the boxes were four long glass cylinders, containing an opaque substance or liquid—she could not tell from where she stood. The nature of this the Frog did not then trouble to explain.

“Sit down,” he said.

His manner was brisk and businesslike. She expected him to take off his mask as he seated himself opposite her, but in this she was disappointed. He sat, and through the mica pieces she saw his hard eyes watching her.

“Well, Ella Bennett, what do you say? Will you marry me, or will you go into a welcome oblivion? You leave this hut either as my wife, or we leave together—dead.”

He got up and went to where the glass cylinders lay and touched one.

“I will smash one of these with my foot and take off my mask, and you shall have at least the satisfaction that you know who I am before you die—but only just before you die!”

She looked at him steadily.

“I will never marry you,” she said, “never! If for no other reason, for your villainous plot against my brother.”

“Your brother is a fool,” said the hollow voice. “He need never have gone through that agony, if you had only promised to marry me. I had a man ready to confess, I myself would have taken the risk of supporting his confession.”

“Why do you want to marry me?” she asked.

It sounded banal, stupid. Yet so grotesque was the suggestion, that she could talk of the matter in cold blood and almost without emotion.

“Because I love you,” was the reply. “Whether I love you as Dick Gordon loves you, I do not know. It may well be that you are something which I cannot possess, and therefore are all the more precious to me—I have never been thwarted in any desire.”

“I would welcome death,” she said quickly, and she heard the muffled chuckle.

“There are worse things than death to a sensitive woman,” he said significantly, “and you shall not die until the end.”

He did not attempt to speak again, but, pulling a pack of cards from his pocket, played solitaire. After an hour’s play, he swept the cards into the fireplace and rose.

He looked at her and there was something in his eyes that froze her blood.

“Perhaps you will never see my face,” he said, and reached out his hand to the oil lamp which stood on the table.

Lower and lower sank the flame, and then came a gentle tap at the door.

Tap…tap…tappity…tap!

The Frog stood still, his hand upon the lamp.

Tap…tap…tappity…tap!

It came again. He turned up the light a little and went to the door.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“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!

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 gave him.