The Fellowship of the Frog

by Edgar Wallace

  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 work-basket 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 came 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, finger-prints, 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 tallie
d, 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 finger-print 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 Ray, 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.

  When he arrived—on this occasion strictly on time—he found the girl in a calm, even a cheerful mood, and his quick eye detected upon her finger a ring of surprising brilliance that he had not seen before. Dick Gordon had made very good use of his spare time that morning.

  “I feel I’m neglecting my business, Elk,” he said after he had led them into the palatial dining-room of the Auto, and had found a cushion for the girl’s back, and had placed her chair exactly where it was least comfortable, “but I guess you’ve got through the morning without feeling my loss.”

  “I certainly have,” said Elk. “A very interesting morning. There is a smallpox scare in the East End,” he went on, “and I’ve heard some talk at Headquarters of having the whole staff vaccinated. If there’s one thing that I do not approve of, it is vaccination. At my time of life I ought to be immune from any germ that happens to be going round.”

  The girl laughed.

  “Poor Mr. Elk! I sympathize with you. Ray and I had a dreadful time when we were vaccinated about five years ago during the big epidemic, although I didn’t have so bad a time as Ray. And neither of us had such an experience as the majority of victims, because we had an excellent doctor, with unique views on vaccination.”

  She pulled back the sleeve of her blouse and showed three tiny scars on the underside of the right forearm.

  “The doctor said he would put it where it wouldn’t show. Isn’t that a good idea?”

  “Yes,” said Elk slowly. “And did he vaccinate your brother the same way?”

  She nodded, and then:

  “What is the matter, Mr. Elk?”

  “I swallowed an olive stone,” said Elk. “I wonder somebody doesn’t start cultivating olives without stones.” He looked out of the window. “You’ve got a pretty fine day for your visit, Miss Bennett,” he said, and launched forth into a rambling condemnation of the English climate.

  It seemed hours to Elk before the meal was finished. The girl was going back to Gordon’s house to look at catalogues which Dick had ordered to be sent to Harley Terrace by telephone.

  “You won’t be coming to the office?” asked Elk.

  “No: do you think it is necessary?”

  “I wanted to see you for ten minutes,” drawled the other, “perhaps a quarter of an hour.”

  “Come back to the house.”

  “Well, I wasn’t thinking of coming back to the house,” said Elk. “Perhaps you’ve got a lady’s drawing-room. I remember seeing one as I came through the marble hall, and Miss Bennett would not mind—”

  “Why, of course not,” she said. “If I’m in the way, I’ll do anything you wish. Show me your lady’s drawing room.”

  When Dick had come back, the detective was smoking, his elbows on the table, his thin, brown hands clasped under his chin, and he was examining, with the eye of a connoisseur, the beautifully carved ceiling.

  “What’s the trouble, Elk?” said Gordon as he sat down.

  “The man under sentence of death is Ray Bennett,” said Elk without preliminary.

  XXXIV.

  THE PHOTO-PLAY

  Dick’s face went white.

  “How do you know this?”

  “Well, there’s a photograph coming along; it will be in London this afternoon; but I needn’t see that. This man under sentence has three vaccination marks on the right forearm.”

  There was a dead silence.

  “I wondered why you turned the talk to vaccination,” said Dick quietly. “I ought to have known there was something in it. What can we do?”

  “I’ll tell you what you can’t do,” said Elk. “You can’t let that girl know. For good and sufficient reasons, Ray Bennett has decided not to reveal his identity, and he must pass out. You’re going to have a rotten afternoon, Captain Gordon,” said Elk gently, “and I’d rather be me than you. But you’ve got to keep up your light-hearted chatter, or that young woman is going to guess that something is wrong.”

  “My God! How dreadful!” said Dick in a low voice.

  “Yes, it is,” admitted Elk, “and we can do nothing. We’ve got to accept it as a fact that he’s guilty. If you thought any other way, it would drive you mad. And even if he was as innocent as you or I, what chance have we of getting an inquiry or stopping the sentence being carried into execution?”

  “Poor John Bennett!” said Dick in a hushed voice.

  “If you’re starting to get sentimental,” snarled Elk, blinking furiously, “I’m going nto a more practical atmosphere. Good afternoon.”

  “Wait. I can’t face this girl for a moment. Come back to the house with me.”

  Elk hesitated, and then grudgingly agreed.

  Ella could not guess, from their demeanour, the horror that was in the minds of these men. Elk fell back upon history and dates—a prolific and a favourite subject.

  “Thank heaven those catalogues have arrived!” said Dick, as, with a sigh of relief, he saw the huge pile of literature on his study table.

  “Why ‘thank heaven’?” she smiled.

  “Because his conscience is pricking him, and he wants an excuse for working.” Elk came to the rescue.

  The strain was one which even he found almost insupportable; and when, after a pleading glance at the other, Dick nodded, he got up with a sense of holiday.

  “I’ll be going now, Miss Bennett,” he said. “I expect you’ll be busy all the afternoon furnishing your cottage. I must come down and see it,” he went on, wilfully dense. “Though it struck me that there wouldn’t be much room for new furniture at Maytree.”

  So far he got when he heard voices in the hall—the excited voice of a woman, shrill, insistent, hysterical. Before Dick could get to the door, it was flung open, and Lola rushed in.

  “Gordon! Gordon! Oh, my God!” she sobbed. “Do you know?”

  “Hush!” said Dick, but the girl was beside herself.

  “They’ve got Ray! They’re going to hang him! Lew’s dead.”

  The mischief was done. Ella came slowly to her feet, rigid with fear.

  “My brother?” she asked, and then Lola saw her for the first time and nodded.

  “I found out,” she sobbed. “I had a suspicion, and I wrote … I’ve got a photograph of Phenan. I knew it was Lew at once, and I guessed the rest. The Frog did it! He planned it; months in advance he planned it. I’m not sorry about Lew; I swe
ar I’m not sorry about Lew! It’s the boy. I sent him to his death, Gordon—” And then she broke into a fit of hysterical sobbing.

  “Put her out,” said Gordon, and Elk lifted the helpless girl in his arms and carried her into the dining-room.

  “True!” Ella whispered the word, and Dick nodded. “I’m afraid it’s true, Ella.”

  She sat down slowly.

  “I wonder where I can find father,” she said, as calmly as though she were discussing some everyday event.

  “You can do nothing. He knows nothing. Do you think it is kind to tell him?”

  She searched his face wonderingly.

  “I think you’re right. Of course you’re right, Dick. I’m sure you’re right. Father mustn’t know. Couldn’t I see him—Ray, I mean?”

  Dick shook his head.

  “Ella, if Ray has kept silent to save you from this, all his forbearance, all his courage will be wasted if you go to him.”

  Again her lips drooped.

  “Yes. It is good of you to think for me.” She put her hand on his, and he felt no tremor. “I don’t know what I can do,” she said. “It is so— stunning. What can I do?”

  “You can do nothing, my dear.” His arm went round her and her tired head fell upon his shoulder.

  “No, I can do nothing,” she whispered.

  Elk came in.

  “A telegram for Miss Bennett,” he said. “The messenger just arrived with it. Been redirected from Horsham, I expect.”

  Dick took the wire.

  “Open it, please,” said the girl. “It may be from father.”

  He tore open the envelope. The telegram ran:

  “Have printed your picture. Cannot understand the murder. Were you trying take photo-play? Come and see me. Silenski House, Wardour Street.”

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “It is Greek to me,” said Dick. “‘Cannot understand murder’—has your father been trying to take photo-plays?”

  “No, dear, I’m sure he hasn’t; he would have told me.”

  “What photographs did your father take?”