“Sooner or later you’ll have a number,” said Dick calmly. “You and your crowd are having the time of your young lives—perhaps because I’m incompetent, or because I’m unfortunate. But some day we shall get you, either I or my successor. You can’t fight the law and win because the law is everlasting and constant.”
“A search of my flat I don’t mind—but a sermon I will not have,” she said contemptuously. “And now, if you men have finished, I should like to get a little beauty sleep.”
“That is the one thing you don’t require,” said the gallant Elk, and she laughed.
“You’re not a bad man, Elk,” she said. “You’re a bad detective, but you’ve a heart of gold.”
“If I had, I shouldn’t trust myself alone with you,” was Elk’s parting shot.
XIX - IN ELSHAM WOOD
Dick Gordon, in the sudden lightening of his heart which had come to him when he realized that his horrible fears were without foundation, was inclined to regard the night as having been well spent. This was not Elk’s view. He was genuinely grave as they drove back to headquarters.
“I’m frightened of these Frogs, and I admit it,” he confessed. “There’s a bad leakage somewhere—how should she know that I put Balder in with Hagn? That has staggered me. Nobody but two men, in addition to ourselves, is in the secret; and if the Frogs are capable of getting that kind of news, it is any odds on Hagn knowing that he is being drawn. They frighten me, I tell you, Captain Gordon. If they only knew a little, and hadn’t got that quite right, I should be worried. But they know everything!”
Dick nodded.
“The whole trouble, Elk, is that the Frogs are not an illegal association. It may be necessary to ask the Prime Minister to proclaim the society.”
“Perhaps he’s a Frog too,” said Elk gloomily. “Don’t laugh, Captain Gordon! There are big people behind these Frogs. I’m beginning to suspect everybody.”
“Start by suspecting me,” said Gordon good-humouredly.
“I have,” was the frank reply. “Then it occurred to me that possibly I walk in my sleep—I used to as a boy. Likely I lead a double life, and I am a detective by day and a Frog by night—you never know. It is clear that there is a genius at the back of the Frogs,” he went on, with unconscious immodesty.
“Lola Bassano?” suggested Dick.
“I’ve thought of her, but she’s no organizer. She had a company on the road when she was nineteen, and it died the death from bad organization. I suppose you think that that doesn’t mean she couldn’t run the Frogs—but it does. You want exactly the same type of intelligence to control the Frogs as you want to control a bank. Maitland is the man. I narrowed the circle down to him after I had a talk with Johnson. Johnson says he’s never seen the old man’s pass-book, and although he is his private secretary, knows nothing whatever of his business transactions except that he buys property and sells it. The money old Maitland makes on the side never appears in the books, and Johnson was a very surprised man when I suggested that Maitland transacted any business at all outside the general routine of the company. And it’s not a company at all—not an incorporated company. It’s a one man show. Would you like to make sure, Captain Gordon?”
“Sure of what?” asked Dick, startled.
“That Miss Bennett isn’t in this at all.”
“You don’t think for one moment she is?” asked Dick, aghast at the thought.
“I’m prepared to believe anything,” said Elk. “We’ve got a clear road; we could be at Horsham in an hour, and it is our business to make sure. In my mind I’m perfectly satisfied that it was not Miss Bennett’s voice. But when we come down to writing out reports for the people upstairs to read, (‘the people upstairs,’ was Elk’s invariable symbol for his superiors), we are going to look silly if we say that we heard Miss Bennett’s voice and didn’t trouble to find out where Miss Bennett was.”
“That is true,” said Dick thoughtfully, and, leaning out to the driver, Elk gave new directions.
The grey of dawn was in the sky as the car ran through the deserted streets of Horsham and began the steady climb toward Maytree Cottage, which lay on the slope of the Shoreham Road.
The cottage showed no signs of life. The blinds were drawn; there was no light of any kind. Dick hesitated, with his hand on the gate.
“I don’t like waking these people,” he confessed. “Old Bennett will probably think that I’ve brought some bad news about his son.”
“I have no conscience,” said Elk, and walked up the brick path.
But John Bennett required no waking. Elk was hailed from one of the windows above, and, looking up, saw the mystery man leaning with his elbows on the window-sill.
“What’s the trouble, Elk?” he asked in a low voice, as though he did not wish to awaken his daughter.
“No trouble at all,” said Elk cheerfully. “We picked up a wireless telephone message in the night, and I’m under the impression that it was your daughter’s voice I heard.”
John Bennett frowned, and Dick saw that he doubted the truth of this explanation.
“It is perfectly true, Mr. Bennett,” he said. “I heard the voice too. We were listening in for a rather important message, and we heard Miss Bennett in circumstances which make it necessary for us to assure ourselves that it was not she who was speaking.”
The cloud passed from John Bennett’s face.
“That’s a queer sort of story, Captain Gordon, but I believe you. I’ll come down and let you in.”
Wearing an old dressing-gown, he opened the door and ushered them into the darkened sitting-room.
“I’ll call Ella, and perhaps she’ll be able to satisfy you that she was in bed at ten o’clock last night.”
He went out of the room, after drawing the curtains to let in the light, and Dick waited with a certain amount of pleasurable anticipation. He had been only too glad of the excuse to come to Horsham, if the truth be told. This girl had so gripped his heart that the days between their meetings seemed like eternity. They heard the feet of Bennett on the stairs, and presently the old man came in, and distress was written largely on his face.
“I can’t understand it,” he said. “Ella is not in her room! The bed has been slept in, but she has evidently dressed and gone out.”
Elk scratched his chin, avoiding Dick’s eyes.
“A lot of young people like getting up early,” he said. “When I was a young man, nothing gave me greater pleasure than to see the sun rise—before I went to bed. Is she in the habit of taking a morning stroll?”
John Bennett shook his head.
“I’ve never known her to do that before. It’s curious I did not hear her, because I slept very badly last night. Will you excuse me, gentlemen?”
He went upstairs and came down in a few minutes, dressed. Together they passed out into the garden It was now quite light, though the sun had not yet tipped the horizon. John Bennett made a brief but fruitless search of the ground behind the cottage, and came hack to them with a confession of failure. He was no more troubled than Dick Gordon. It was impossible that it could have been she, that Elk was mistaken. Yet Lola had been emphatic. Against that, the hall-porter at Caverley House had been equally certain that the only visitor to Lola’s flat that night was the aged Mr. Maitland; and so far as he knew, or Elk had been able to discover, there was no other entrance into the building.
“I see you have a car here. You came down by road. Did you pass anybody?”
Dick shook his head.
“Do you mind if we take the car in the opposite direction toward Shoreham?”
“I was going to suggest that,” said Gordon, “Isn’t it rather dangerous for her, walking at this hour? The roads are thronged with tramps.”
The older man made no reply. He sat with the driver, his eyes fixed anxiously upon the road ahead. The car went ten miles at express speed, then turned, and began a search of the side roads. Nearing the cottage again, Dick pointed.
“‘What is that wood?” he asked pointing to a dense wood to which a narrow road led.
“That is Elsham Wood; she wouldn’t go there,” he hesitated.
“Let us try it,” said Dick, and the bonnet of the car was turned on to a narrow road. In a few minutes they were running through a glade of high trees, the entwining tops of which made the road a place of gloom.
“There are car tracks here,” said Dick suddenly, but John Bennett shook his head.
“People come here for picnics,” he said, but Dick was not satisfied.
These marks were new, and presently he saw them turn off the road to a ‘ride’ between the trees. He caught no glimpse of a car, however. The direction of the tracks supported the old man’s theory. The road ended a mile farther along, and beyond that was a waste of bracken and tree stumps, for the wood had been extensively thinned during the war.
With some difficulty the car was turned and headed back again. They carne through the glade into the open, and then Dick uttered a cry.
John Bennett had already seen the girl. She was walking quickly in the centre of the road, and stepped on to the grassy border without looking round as the car came abreast of her. Then, looking up, she saw her father, and went pale.
He was in the road in a moment.
“My dear,” he said reproachfully, “where have you been at this hour?”
She looked frightened, Dick thought. The eyes of Elk narrowed as he surveyed her.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I dressed and went out, father,” she said, and nodded to Dick. “You’re a surprising person, Captain Gordon. Why are you here at this hour?”
“I carne to interview you,” said Dick, forcing a smile.
“Me!” She was genuinely astonished. “Why me?”
“Captain Gordon heard your voice on a wireless telephone in the middle of the night, and wanted to know ail about it,” said her father.
If he was relieved, he was also troubled. Looking at him, Elk suddenly saw the relief intensified, and with his quick intuition guessed the cause before John Bennett put the question.
“Was it Ray?” he asked eagerly. “Did he come down?”
She shook her head.
“No, father,” she said quietly. “And as to the wireless telephone, I have never spoken into a wireless telephone, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one,” she said.
“Of course you haven’t,” said Dick. “Only we were rather worried when we heard your voice, but Mr. Elk’s explanation, that it was somebody speaking whose voice was very mulch like yours, is obviously correct.”
“Tell me this, Miss Bennett,” said Elk quietly. “Were you in town last night?”
She did not reply.
“My daughter went to bed at ten,” said John Bennett roughly. “What is the sense of asking her whether she was in London last night?”
“Were you in town in the early hours of this morning. Miss Bennett?” persisted Elk, and to Dick’s amazement she nodded.
“Were you at Caverley House?”
“No,” she answered instantly.
“But, Ella, what were you doing in town?” asked John Bennett. “Did you go to see that wretched brother of yours?”
Again the hesitation, and then:
“No.”
“Did you go by yourself?”
“No,” said Ella, and her lip trembled. “I wish you wouldn’t ask me any further questions. I’m not a free agent in the matter. Daddy, you’ve always trusted me: you’ll trust me now, won’t you?”
He took her hand and held it in both of his.
“I’ll trust you always, girlie,” he said; “and these gentlemen must do the same.”
Her challenging eyes met Dick’s, and he nodded.
“I am one who will share that trust,” he said, and something in her look rewarded him.
Elk rubbed his chin fiercely.
“Being naturally of a trusting nature, I should no more think of doubting your word, Miss Bennett, than I should of believing myself.” He looked at his watch. “I think we’ll go along and fetch poor old Balder from the house of sin,” he said.
“You’ll stop and have some breakfast?”
Dick looked pleadingly at Elk, and the detective, with an air of resignation, agreed.
“Anyway, Balder won’t mind an hour more or less,” he said. Whilst Ella was preparing the breakfast, Dick and Elk paced the road outside.
“Well, what do you think of it, Captain?”
“I don’t understand, but I have every confidence that Miss Bennett has not lied,” said Dick.
“Faith is a wonderful thing,” murmured Elk, and Dick turned on him sharply.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I say. I have got faith in Miss Bennett,” he said soothingly; “and, after all, she’s only another little bit of the jigsaw puzzle that will fall into place when we fix the piece that’s shaped like a Frog. And John Bennett’s another.” he said after a moment’s thought.
From where they stood they could see, looking toward Shoreham, the opening of the narrow Elsham Wood road.
“The thing that puzzles me,” Elk was saying, “is why she should go into that wood in the middle of the night—” He stopped, lowering his head. There came to them the soft purr of a motorcar. “Where is that?” he asked.
The question was answered instantly. Slowly there came into view from the wood road the bonnet of a car, followed immediately by the remainder of a large limousine, which turned toward them, gathering speed as it came. A moment later it flashed past them, and they saw the solitary occupant.
“Well, I’m damned!” said Elk, who very infrequently indulged in profanity, but Dick felt that on this occasion at least he was justified. For the man in the limousine was the bearded Ezra Maitland; and he knew that it was to see Maitland that the girl had gone to Elsham Wood.
XX - HAGN
A minute later Ella came to the door to call them. “Was that a car went past?” she asked, and they detected a note of anxiety in her tone.
“Yes,” said Elk, “it was a big car. Didn’t see who was in it, but it was a big car.”