Elk 01 The Fellowship of the Frog (7 page)

The cheery face of the philosopher clouded.

“I’m afraid that will be difficult,” he said. “The old man never sees people—even the biggest men in the City. He hates women and strangers, and although I’ve been with him all these years, I’m not so sure that he has got used to me! What is it about?”

She hesitated.

“It’s about Ray’s salary,” and then, as he shook his head, she went on urgently: “It is so important, Mr. Johnson. Ray has extravagant tastes, and if they cut his salary it means—well, you know Ray so well!—”

He nodded.

“I don’t know whether I can do anything,” he said dubiously. “I’ll go up and ask Mr. Maitland, but I’m afraid that it is a million to one chance against his seeing you.”

When he came back, the jovial face of Mr. Johnson was one broad smile.

“Come up before he changes his mind,” he said, and led her to the lift. “You’ll have to do all the talking, Miss Bennett—he’s an eccentric old cuss and as hard as flint.”

He showed her into a small and comfortably furnished room, and waved his hand to a writing-table littered with papers.

“My little den,” he explained.

From the “den” a large rosewood door opened upon Mr. Maitland’s office.

Johnson knocked softly, and, with a heart that beat a little faster, Ella was ushered into the presence of the strange old man who at that moment was dominating the money market.

The room was large, and the luxury of the fittings took her breath away. The walls were of rosewood inlaid with exquisite silver inlay. Light came from concealed lamps in the cornice as well as from the long stained-glass windows. Each article of furniture in the room was worth a fortune, and she guessed that the carpet, into which her feet sank, equalled in costliness the whole contents of an average house.

Behind a vast ormolu writing-table sat the great Maitland, bolt upright, watching her from under his shaggy white brows. A few stray hairs of his spotless beard rested on the desk, and as he raised his hand to sweep them into place, she saw he wore fingerless woollen gloves. His head was completely bald…she looked at his big ears, standing away from his head, fascinated. Patriarchal, yet repulsive. There was something gross, obscene, about him that hurt her. It was not the untidiness of his dress, it was not his years. Age brings refinement, that beauty of decay that the purists call caducity. This old man had grown old coarsely.

His scrutiny lacked the assurance she expected. It almost seemed that he was nervous, ill at ease. His gaze shifted from the girl to his secretary, and then to the rich colouring of the windows, and then furtively back to Ella again.

“This is Miss Bennett, sir. You remember that Bennett is our exchange clerk, and a very smart fellow indeed. Miss Bennett wants you to reconsider your decision about that salary cut.”

“You see, Mr. Maitland,” Ella broke in, “we’re not particularly well off, and the reduction makes a whole lot of difference to us.”

Mr. Maitland wagged his bald head impatiently.

“I don’t care whether you’re well off or not well off,” he said loudly. “When I reduces salaries I reduces ‘um, see?”

She stared at him in amazement. The voice was harsh and common. The language and tone were of the gutter. In that sentence he confirmed all her first impressions.

“If he don’t like it he can go, and if you don’t like it”—he fixed his dull eyes on the uncomfortable-looking Johnson—“you can go too. There’s lots of fellers I can get—pick ‘um up on the streets! Millions of ‘um! That’s all.” Johnson tiptoed from the presence and closed the door behind her.

“He’s a horror!” she gasped. “How can you endure contact with him, Mr. Johnson?”

The stout man smiled quietly.

“‘Millions of ‘um,’” he repeated, “and he’s right. With a million and a half unemployed on the streets, I can’t throw up a good job—”

“I’m sorry,” she said, impulsively putting her hand on his arm. “I didn’t know he was like that,” she went on more mildly. “He’s—terrible!”

“He’s a self-made man, and perhaps he would have been well advised to have got an artisan to do the job,” smiled Johnson, “but he’s not really bad. I wonder why he saw you?”

“Doesn’t he see people?”

He shook his head.

“Not unless it is absolutely necessary, and that only happens about twice a year. I don’t think there is anybody in this building that he’s ever spoken to—not even the managers.”

He took her down to the general office. Ray had not come back.

“The truth is,” confessed Johnson when she asked him, “that Ray hasn’t been to the office this morning. He sent word to say that he wasn’t feeling any too good, and I fixed it so that he has a day off.”

“He’s not ill?” she asked in alarm, but Johnson reassured her.

“No. I got on the telephone to him—he has a telephone at his new flat.”

“I thought he had an ordinary apartment!” she said, aghast, the housewife in her perturbed. “A flat—where is it?”

“In Knightsbridge,” replied Johnson quietly. “Yes, it sounds expensive, but I believe he has a bargain. A man who was going abroad sub-let it to him for a song. I suppose he wrote to you from the lodgings in Bloomsbury where he intended going. May I be candid, Miss Bennett?”

“If it is about Ray, I wish you would,” she answered quickly.

“Ray is rather worrying me,” said Johnson. “Naturally I want to do all that I can for him, for I am fond of him. At present my job is covering up his rather frequent absences from the office—you need not mention this fact to him—but it is rather a strain, for the old man has an uncanny instinct for a shirker. He is living in better style than he ought to be able to afford, and I’ve seen him dressed to kill with some of the swellest people in town—at least, they looked swell.”

The girl felt herself go cold, and the vague unrest in her mind became instantly a panic.

“There isn’t…anything wrong at the office?” she asked anxiously.

“No. I took the liberty of going through his books. They’re square. His cash account is right to a centimo. Crudely stated, he isn’t stealing—at least, not from us. There’s another thing. He calls himself Raymond Lester at Knightsbridge. I found this out by accident, and asked him why he had taken another name. His explanation was fairly plausible. He didn’t want Mr. Bennett to hear that he was cutting a shine. He has some profitable outside work, but he won’t tell me what it is.”

Ella was glad to get away, glad to reach the seclusion which the wide spaces of the park afforded. She must think and decide upon the course she would take. Ray was not the kind of boy to accept the draconic attitude, either in her or in John Bennett. His father must not know—she must appeal to Ray. Perhaps it was true that he had found a remunerative sideline. Lots of young men ran spare time work with profit to themselves—only Ray was not a worker.

She sat down on a park chair to wrestle with the problem, and so intent was she upon its solution that she did not realize that somebody had stopped before her.

“This is a miracle!” said a laughing voice, and she looked up into the blue eyes of Dick Gordon. “And now you can tell me what is the difficulty?” he asked as he pulled another chair toward her and sat down.

“Difficulty…who…who said I was in difficulties?” she countered.

“Your face is the traitor,” he smiled. “Forgive this attire. I have been to make an official call at the United States Embassy.”

She noticed for the first time that he wore the punctilious costume of officialdom, the well-fitting tail-coat, the polished top-hat and regulation cravat. She observed first of all that he looked very well in them, and that he seemed even younger.

“I have an idea it is your brother,” he said. “I saw him a few minutes ago—there he is now.”

She followed the direction of his eyes, and half rose from her chair in her astonishment. Riding on the tan track which ran parallel to the park road, were a man and a girl. The man was Ray. He was smartly dressed, and from the toes of his polished riding-boots to the crown of his grey hat, was all that was creditable to expensive tailoring. The girl at his side was young, pretty, petite.

The riders passed without Ray noticing the interested spectators. He was in his gayest mood, and the sound of his laughter came back to the dumbfounded girl.

“But…I don’t understand—do you know the lady, Mr. Gordon?”

“Very well by repute,” said Dick drily. “Her name is Lola Bassano.”

“Is she—a lady?”

Dick’s eyes twinkled.

“Elk says she’s not, but Elk is prejudiced. She has money and education and breed. Whether or not these three assets are sufficient to constitute a lady, I don’t know. Elk says not, but, as I say, Elk is considerably prejudiced.”

She sat silent, her mind in a whirl.

“I have an idea that you want help…about your brother,” said Dick quietly. “He is frightening you, isn’t he?”

She nodded.

“I thought so. He is puzzling
me
. I know all about him, his salary and prospects and his queer masquerade under an alias. I’m not troubling about that, because boys love those kinds of mysteries. Unfortunately, they are expensive mysteries, and I want to know how he can afford to keep up this suddenly acquired position.”

He mentioned a sum and she gasped.

“It costs all that,” said Dick. “Elk, who has a passion for exact detail, and who knows to a penny what the riding suit costs, supplied me with particulars.”

She interrupted him with such a gesture of despair that he felt a brute.

“What can I do…what can I do?” she asked. “Everybody body wants to help—you Mr. Johnson, and, I’m sure, Mr. Elk. But he is impossible—Ray, I mean. It will be fighting a feather bed. It may seem absurd to you, so much fuss over Ray’s foolish escapade, but it means, oh, so much to us, father and me!”

Dick said nothing. It was too delicate a matter for an outsider to intrude upon. But the real delicacy of the situation was comprised in the boy’s riding companion. As though guessing his thoughts, she asked suddenly:

“Is she a nice girl—Miss Bassano? I mean, is she one whom Ray should know?”

“She is very charming,” he answered after a pause, and she noted the evasion and carried the subject no farther. Presently she turned the talk to her call on Ezra Maitland, and he heard her description without expressing surprise.

“He’s a rough diamond,” he said. “Elk knows something about him which he refuses to tell. Elk enjoys mystifying his chiefs even more than detecting criminals. But I’ve heard about Maitland from other sources.”

“Why does he wear gloves in the office?” she asked unexpectedly.

“Gloves—I didn’t know that,” he said, surprised. “Why shouldn’t he?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know…it was a silly idea, but I thought—it has only occurred to me since…”

He waited.

“When he put up his hand to smooth his beard, I’m almost sure I saw a tattoo mark on his left wrist—just the edge of it showing above the end of the glove—the head and eyes of frog.”

Dick Gordon listened, thunderstruck.

“Are you sure it wasn’t your imagination, Miss Bennett?” he asked. “I am afraid the Frog is getting on all our nerves.

“It may have been,” she nodded “but I from within a few feet of him, and a patch of light, reflected from his blotter, caught the wrist for a second.”

“Did you speak to Johnson about it?”

She shook her head.

“I thought afterwards that even he, with all his long years of service, might not have observed the tattoo mark. I remember now that Ray told me Mr. Maitland always wore gloves, summer or winter.”

Dick was puzzled. It was unlikely that this man, the head of a great financial corporation, should be associated with a gang of tramps. And yet—

“When is your brother going to Horsham?” he asked.

“On Sunday,” said the girl. “He has promised father to come to lunch.”

“I suppose,” said the cunning young man, “that it isn’t possible to ask me to be a fourth?”

“You will be a fifth,” she smiled. “Mr. Johnson is coming down too. Poor Mr. Johnson is scared of father, and I think the fear is mutual. Father resembles Maitland in that respect, that he does not like strangers. I’ll invite you anyway,” she said, and the prospect of the Sunday meeting cheered her.

Elk came to see him that night, just as he was going out to a theatre, and Dick related the girl’s suspicion. To his surprise, Elk took the startling theory very coolly.

“It’s possible,” he said, “but it’s more likely that the tattoo mark isn’t a frog at all. Old Maitland was a seaman as a boy—at least, that is what the only biography of him in existence says. It’s a half-column that appeared in a London newspaper about twelve years ago, when he bought up Lord Meister’s place on the Embankment and began to enlarge his offices. I’ll tell you this, Mr. Gordon, that I’m quite prepared to believe anything of old Maitland.”

“Why?” asked Dick in astonishment. He knew nothing of the discoveries which the detective had made.

“Because I just should,” said Elk. “Men who make millions are not ordinary. If they were ordinary they wouldn’t be millionaires. I’ll inquire about that tattoo mark.”

Dick’s attention was diverted from the Frogs that week by an unusual circumstance. On the Tuesday he was sent for by the Foreign Minister’s secretary, and, to his surprise, he was received personally by the august head of that department. The reason for this signal honour was disclosed.

“Captain Gordon,” said the Minister, “I am expecting from France the draft commercial treaty that is to be signed as between ourselves and the French and Italian Governments. It is very important that this document should be well guarded because—and I tell you this in confidence—it deals with a revision of tariff rates. I won’t compromise you by telling you in what manner the revisions are applied, but it is essential that the King’s Messenger who is bringing the treaty should be well guarded, and I wish to supplement the ordinary police protection by sending you to Dover to meet him. It is a little outside your duties, but your Intelligence work during the war must be my excuse for saddling you with this responsibility. Three members of the French and Italian secret police will accompany him to Dover, when you and your men will take on the guard duty, and remain until you personally see the document deposited in my own safe.”