Elk 01 The Fellowship of the Frog (28 page)

Elk was perturbed.

“It isn’t a small matter to arrest a millionaire, you know, Captain Gordon. I daresay in America it is simple, and I am told you could pinch the President if you found him with a flask in his pocket. But here it is a little different.”

How very different it was, Dick discovered when he made application in private for the necessary warrants. At four o’clock they were delivered to him by the clerk of a reluctant magistrate, and, accompanied by police officers, be went back to Maitland’s palatial home.

The footman who admitted them said that Mr. Maitland was lying down and that he did not care to disturb him. In proof, he sent for a second footman, who confirmed the statement.

“Which is his room?” said Dick Gordon. “I am a police officer and I want to see him.”

“On the second floor, sir.”

He showed them to an electric lift, which carried the five to the second floor. Opposite the lift grille was a large double door, heavily burnished and elaborately gilded.

“Looks more like the entrance to a theatre,” said Elk. in an undertone.

Dick knocked. There was no answer. He knocked louder. Still there was no answer. And then, to Elk’s surprise, the young man launched himself at the door with all his strength. There was a sound of splitting wood and the door parted. Dick stood in the entrance, rooted to the ground.

Ezra Maitland lay half on the bed, his legs dragging over the side. At his feet was the prostrate figure of the old woman whom he called Matilda. They were both dead, and the pungent fumes of cordite still hung in a blue cloud beneath the ceiling.

Dick ran to the bedside, and one glance at the still figures told him all he wanted to know.

“Both shot,” he said, and looked up at the filmy cloud under the ceiling. “May have happened any time—a quarter of an hour ago. This stuff hangs about for hours.”

“Hold every servant in the house,” said Elk in an undertone to the men who were with him.

A doorway led to a smaller bedroom, which was evidently that occupied by Maitland’s sister.

“The shot was fired from this entrance,” said Dick. “Probably a silencer was used, but we shall hear about that later.”

He searched the floor and found two spent cartridges of a heavy calibre automatic.

“They killed the woman, of course,” he said, speaking his thoughts aloud. “I was afraid of this. If I could only have got our men in!”

“You expected him to be murdered?” said Elk in astonishment.

Dick nodded. He was trying the window of the woman’s room. It was unfastened, and led on to a narrow parapet, protected by a low balustrade. From there, access could be had into another room on the same floor, and no attempt had been made by the murderer to conceal the fact that this was the way he had passed. The window was wide open, and there were wet footmarks on the floor. It was a guest room, slightly overcrowded with surplus furniture, which had been put there apparently by the housekeeper instead of in a lumber-room.

The door opened again into the corridor, and faced a narrow flight of stairs leading to the servants’ quarters above. Elk went down on his knees and examined the tread of the carpet carefully.

“Up here, I think,” he said, and ran ahead of his chief.

The third floor consisted entirely of servants’ rooms, and it was some time before Elk could pick up the footprints which led directly to No. 1. He tried the handle: it was locked. Taking a pace backward, he raised his foot and kicked open the door. He found himself in a servant’s bedroom, which was empty. An attic window opened on to the sloping roof of another parapet, and without a second’s hesitation Dick went out, following the course of that very precarious alleyway. Farther along, iron rails protected the walker, and this was evidently one of the ways of escape in case of fire. He followed the “path” across three roofs until he came to a short flight of iron stairs, which reached down to the flat roof of another house, and a guard fire-escape. Guarded it had been, but now the iron gate which barred progress was open, and Dick ran down the narrow stairs into a concrete yard surrounded on three sides by high walls and on the fourth by the back of a house, which was apparently unoccupied, for the blinds were all drawn.

There was a gate in the third wall, and it was ajar. Passing through, he was in a mews. A man was washing a motorcar a dozen paces from where he stood, and they hurried toward him.

“Yes, sir,” said the cleaner, wiping his streaming forehead with the back of his hand, “I saw a man come out of there about five minutes ago. He was a servant—a footman or something—I didn’t recognize him, but he seemed in a hurry.”

“Did he wear a hat?”

The man considered.

“Yes, sir, I think he did,” he said. “He went out that way,” and he pointed.

The two men hurried along, turned into Berkeley Street, and as they did so, the car-washer turned to the closed doors of his garage and whistled softly. The door opened slowly and Mr. Joshua Broad came out.

“Thank you,” he said, and a piece of crisp and crackling paper went into the washer’s hand.

He was out of sight before Dick and the detective came back from their vain quest.

No doubt existed in Dick’s mind as to who the murderer was. One of the footmen was missing. The remaining servants were respectable individuals of unimpeachable character. The seventh had come at the same time as Mr. Maitland; and although he wore a footman’s livery, he had apparently no previous experience of the duties which he was expected to perform. He was an ill-favoured man, who spoke very little, and “kept himself to himself,” as they described it; took part in none of their pleasures or gossip; was never in the servants’ hall a second longer than was necessary.

“Obviously a Frog,” said Elk, and was overjoyed to learn that there was a photograph of the man in existence.

The photograph had its origin in an elaborate and somewhat pointless joke which had been played on the cook by the youngest of the footmen. The joke consisted of finding in the cook’s workbasket a photograph of the ugly footman, and for this purpose the young servant had taken a snap of the man.

“Do you know him?” asked Dick, looking at the picture. Elk nodded.

“He has been through my hands, and I don’t think I shall have any difficulty in placing him, although for the moment his name escapes me.”

A search of the records, however, revealed the identity of the missing man, and by the evening an enlargement of the photograph, and his name, aliases and general characteristics, were locked into the form of every newspaper in the metropolis.

One of the servants had heard the shot, but thought it was the door being slammed—a pardonable mistake, because Mr. Maitland was in the habit of banging doors.

“Maitland was a Frog all right,” reported Elk after he had seen the body removed to the mortuary. “He’s well decorated on the left wrist—yes, slightly askew. That is one of the points that you’ve never cleared up to me, Captain Gordon. Why they should be tattooed on the left wrist I can understand, but why the frog shouldn’t be stamped square I’ve never understood.”

“That is one of the little mysteries that can’t be cleared up until we are through with the big ones,” said Dick.

A telegram had been received that afternoon by the missing footman. This fact was not remembered until after Elk had returned to headquarters. A ‘phone message through to the district post-office brought a copy of the message. It was very simple.

“Finish and clear,” were the three words. The message was unsigned. It had been handed in at the Temple Post Office at two o’clock, and the murderer had lost no time in carrying out his instructions.

Maitland’s office was in the hands of the police, and a systematic search had already begun of its documents and books. At seven o’clock that night Elk went to Fitzroy Square, and Johnson opened the door to him. Looking past him, Elk saw that the passage was filled with furniture and packing cases, and remembered that early in the morning Johnson had mentioned that he was moving, and had taken two cheaper rooms in South London.

“You’ve packed?”

Johnson nodded.

“I hate leaving this place,” he said, “but it’s much too expensive. It seems as though I shall never get another job, and I’d better face that fact sensibly. If I live at Balham, I can live comfortably. I’ve very few expensive tastes.”

“If you have, you can indulge them,” said Elk. “We found the old man’s will. He has left you everything!”

Johnson’s jaw dropped, his eyes opened wide.

“Are you joking?” he said.

“I was never more serious in my life. The old man has left you every penny he had. Here is a copy of the will: I thought you’d like to see it.”

He opened his pocket-case, producing a sheet of foolscap, and Johnson read:

“I, Ezra Maitland, of 593, Eldor Road, in the County of Middlesex, declare this to be my last will and testament, and I formally revoke all other wills and codicils to such wills. I bequeath all my property, movable or immovable, all lands, houses, deeds, shares in stock companies whatsoever, and all jewellery, reversions, carriages, motorcars, and all other possessions absolutely, to Philip Johnson, of 475, Fitzroy Square, in the County of London, clerk. I declare him to be the only honest man I have ever met with in my long and sorrowful life, and I direct him to devote himself with unremitting care to the destruction of that society or organization which is known as the Frogs, and which for four and twenty years has extracted large sums of blackmail from me.”

It was signed in a clerkly hand familiar to Johnson, and was witnessed by two men whose names he knew.

He sat down and did not attempt to speak for a long time.

“I read of the murder in the evening paper,” he said after a while. “In fact, I’ve been up to the house, but the policemen referred me to you, and I knew you were too busy to be bothered. How was he killed?”

“Shot,” said Elk.

“Have they caught the man?”

“We shall have him by the morning,” said Elk with confidence. “Now that we’ve taken Balder, there’ll be nobody to warn the men we want.”

“It is very dreadful,” said Johnson after a while. “But this,”—he looked at the paper—“this has quite knocked me out. I don’t know what to say. Where was it found?”

“In one of his deed boxes.”

“I wish he hadn’t,” said Johnson with emphasis. “I mean, left me his money. I hate responsibility. I’m temperamentally unfitted to run a big business…I wish he hadn’t!”

“How did he take it?” asked Dick when Elk had returned.

“He’s absolutely hazed. Poor devil, I felt sorry for him, and I never thought I should feel sorry for any man who came into money. He was just getting ready to move into a cheaper house when I arrived. I suppose he won’t go to the Prince of Caux’s mansion. The change in Johnson’s prospects might make a difference to Ray Bennett: does that strike you, Captain Gordon?”

“I thought of that possibility,” said Dick shortly.

He had an interview in the afternoon with the Director of Public Prosecutions in regard to Balder. And that learned gentleman echoed his own fears.

“I can’t see how we’re going to get a verdict of murder against this man, although it is as plain as daylight that he poisoned Mills and was responsible for the bomb outrage. But you can’t hang a man on suspicion, even though the suspicion is not open to doubt. How did he kill Mills, do you think?”

“Mills had a cold,” said Dick. “He had been coughing all the way up in the car, and had asked Balder to close the window of the room. Balder obviously closed, or nearly closed the window, and probably slipped a cyanide tablet to the man, telling him it was good for his cold. It was a fairly natural thing for Mills to take and swallow the tablet, and that, I am sure, is what happened. We made a search of Balder’s house at Slough, and found a duplicate set of keys, including one to Elk’s safe. Balder got there early in the morning and planted the bomb, knowing that Elk and I would be opening the bags that morning.”

“And helped Hagn to escape,” said the Public Prosecutor.

“That was much more simple,” explained Dick. “I gather that the inspector who was seen walking out at half past two was Hagn. When Balder went into the cell to keep the man company; be must have been dressed underneath in the police uniform, and have carried the necessary handcuffs and pass-keys with him. He was not searched—a fact for which I am as much responsible as Elk: The chief danger we had to fear from Balder came from his closeness to us, and his ability to communicate immediately to his chief every movement which we made. His name is Kramer, and he is by birth a Lithuanian. He was expelled from Germany at the age of eighteen for his revolutionary activities, and came to this country two years later, where he joined the police. At what time he came into contact with the Frogs I do not know, but it is fairly clear, from evidence we have obtained, that the man has been engaged in various illegal operations for many years past. I’m afraid you are right about Balder: it will be immensely difficult to get a conviction until we have caught Frog himself.”

“And will you catch the Frog, do you think?”

Dick Gordon smiled cryptically.

No fresh news had come about the murder of Maitland and his sister, and he seized the opportunity which the lull gave to him. Ella Bennett was in the vegetable garden, engaged in the prosaic task of digging potatoes when he appeared, and she came running toward him, stripping her leather gloves.

“This is a splendid surprise,” she said, and flushed at the consciousness of her own enthusiasm. “Poor man, you must be having a terrible time! I saw the newspaper this morning. Isn’t it dreadful about poor Mr. Maitland? He was here yesterday morning.”

He nodded.

“Is it true that Mr. Johnson has been left the whole of Maitland’s money? Isn’t that splendid!”