The Fellowship of the Frog E-Book

Edgar Wallace

• Herausgeber: Edgar Wallace
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Fellowship of the Frog starts out with the murder of an undercover detective at the hands of the Frog, the mysterious leader of an ever increasing group of tramps. The Fellowship, so called because of the frog tattoos on the members’ hands, has become so expansive that they threaten the international affairs of England. Enter Dick Gordon and Elk, the rozzers on the case of the Frog. Gordon is dashing, Elk doesn’t play by the book. Gordon wants the girl, Elk wants a promotion. In other words, they’re perfect for me. But the questions they have to answer are many: Who is that strange American who keeps turning up at interesting places? Who is the Frog and how can they stop him? Is The Fellowship of the Frog really the coolest name for mystery novel? (Yes. Sweet baby Jesus, yes.) Will Dick Gordon and Miss Bennett be able to live happily ever after? Is Elk’s mangling of important historical dates funny way to round out his character? (Ugh, no.) Will all of these questions be neatly wrapped up in the end? (You better believe it. The Frog is no match for my rules of good mystery writing).

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

THE BOOK

THE AUTHOR

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG

FOREWORDTHE FROGS

I. - AT MAYTREE COTTAGE

II. - A TALK ABOUT FROGS

III. - THE FROG

IV. - ELK

V. - MR. MAITLAND GOES HOME

VI. - MR. MAITLAND GOES SHOPPING

VII. - A CALL ON MR. MAITLAND

VIII. - THE OFFENSIVE RAY

IX. - THE MAN WHO WAS WRECKED

X. - ON HARLEY TERRACE

XI. - MR. BROAD EXPLAINS

XII. - THE EMBELLISHMENT OF MR. MAITLAND

XIII. - A RAID ON ELDOR STREET

XIV. - "ALL BULLS HEAR"

XV. - THE MORNING AFTER

XVI. - RAY LEARNS THE TRUTH

XVII. - THE COMING OF MILLS

XVIII. - THE BROADCAST

XIX. - IN ELSHAM WOOD

XX. - HAGN

XXI. - MR. JOHNSON'S VISITOR

XXII. - THE INQUIRY

XXIII. - A MEETING

XXIV. - WHY MAITLAND CAME

XXV. - IN REGARD TO SAUL MORRIS

XXVI. - PROMOTION FOR BALDER

XXVII. - MR. BROAD IS INTERESTING

XXVIII. - MURDER

XXIX. - THE FOOTMAN

XXX. - THE TRAMPS

XXXI. - THE CHEMICAL CORPORATION

XXXII. - IN GLOUCESTER PRISON

XXXIII. - THE FROG OF THE NIGHT

XXXIV. - THE PHOTO-PLAY

XXXV. - GETTING THROUGH

XXXVI. - THE POWER CABLE

XXXVII. - THE GET-AWAY

XXXVIII. - THE MYSTERY MAN

XXXIX. - THE AWAKENING

XL. - FROG

XLI. - IN QUARRY HOUSE

XLII. - JOSHUA BROAD EXPLAINS

THE BOOK

The Fellowship of the Frog starts out with the murder of an undercover detective at the hands of the Frog, the mysterious leader of an ever increasing group of tramps. The Fellowship, so called because of the frog tattoos on the members’ hands, has become so expansive that they threaten the international affairs of England. Enter Dick Gordon and Elk, the rozzers on the case of the Frog. Gordon is dashing, Elk doesn’t play by the book. Gordon wants the girl, Elk wants a promotion. In other words, they’re perfect for me. But the questions they have to answer are many: Who is that strange American who keeps turning up at interesting places? Who is the Frog and how can they stop him? Is the Fellowship of the Frog really the coolest name for mystery novel? (Yes. Sweet baby Jesus, yes.) Will Dick Gordon and Miss Bennett be able to live happily ever after? Is Elk’s mangling of important historical dates funny way to round out his character? (Ugh, no.) Will all of these questions be neatly wrapped up in the end? (You better believe it. The Frog is no match for my rules of good mystery writing).

THE AUTHOR

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 – 10 February 1932) was an English writer.

Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at 12. He joined the army at 21 and was a war correspondent during the Second Boer War for Reuters and the Daily Mail. Struggling with debt, he left South Africa, returned to London and began writing thrillers to raise income, publishing books including The Four Just Men (1905). Drawing on time as a reporter in the Congo, covering the Belgian atrocities, Wallace serialised short stories in magazines, later publishing collections such as Sanders of the River (1911). He signed with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921 and became an internationally recognised author.

After an unsuccessful bid to stand as Liberal MP for Blackpool (as one of David Lloyd George's Independent Liberals) in the 1931 general election, Wallace moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a script writer for RKO studios. He died suddenly from undiagnosed diabetes, during the initial drafting of King Kong (1933).

A prolific writer, one of Wallace's publishers claimed that a quarter of all books then read in England were written by him. As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screen plays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace's work. He is remembered for the creation of King Kong, as a writer of 'the colonial imagination', for the J. G. Reeder detective stories, and the Green Archer. He sold over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions and The Economist describes him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century", although few of his books are still in print in the UK.

Wallace was born at 7 Ashburnham Grove, Greenwich, to actors Richard Horatio Edgar and Mary Jane "Polly" Richards, née Blair.

Wallace's mother was born in 1843, in Liverpool, to an Irish Catholic family. Mary's family had been in show business and she worked in the theatre as a stagehand, usherette and bit-part actress until she married in 1867. Captain Joseph Richards was also born in Liverpool in 1838, also from an Irish Catholic family. He and his father John Richards were both Merchant Navy captains, and his mother Catherine Richards came from a mariner family. When Mary was eight months pregnant, in January 1868, her husband, Joseph Richards died at sea. After the birth, destitute, Mary took to the stage, assuming the stage name "Polly" Richards. In 1872, Polly met and joined the Marriott family theatre troupe, managed by Mrs. Alice Edgar, her husband Richard Edgar and their three adult children, Grace Edgar, Adeline Edgar and Richard Horatio Edgar. Richard Horatio Edgar and Polly ended up having a "broom cupboard" style sexual encounter during an after-show party. Discovering she was pregnant, Polly invented a fictitious obligation in Greenwich that would last at least half a year, and obtained a room in a boarding house where she lived until her son's birth on 1 April 1875. During her confinement she had asked her midwife to find a couple to foster the child. The midwife introduced Polly to her close friend, Mrs Freeman, a mother of ten children, whose husband George Freeman was a Billingsgate fishmonger. On 9 April 1875, Polly took Edgar to the semi-literate Freeman family and made arrangements to visit often.

Wallace, then known as Richard Horatio Edgar Freeman, Polly's young son, had a happy childhood, forming a close bond with 20-year-old Clara Freeman who became a second mother to him. By 1878, Polly could no longer afford the small sum she had been paying the Freemans to care for her son and instead of placing the boy in the workhouse, the Freemans adopted him. Polly never visited him again as a child. His foster-father George Freeman was determined to ensure Richard received a good education and for some time Wallace attended St. Alfege with St. Peter’s, a boarding school in Peckham, however he played truant and then left full-time education at the age of 12.

By his early teens, Wallace had held down numerous jobs such as newspaper-seller at Ludgate Circus near Fleet Street, milk-delivery boy, rubber factory worker, shoe shop assistant and ship’s cook. A plaque at Ludgate Circus commemorates Wallace's first encounter with the newspaper business. He was dismissed from his job on the milk run for stealing money. In 1894, he became engaged to a local Deptford girl, Edith Anstree, but broke the engagement, enlisting in the Infantry.

Wallace registered in the army under the adopted name Edgar Wallace, taken from the author of Ben-Hur, Lew Wallace. At the time the medical records register him as having a 33-inch chest and being stunted from his childhood spent in the slums. He was posted in South Africa with the West Kent Regiment, in 1896. He disliked army life but managed to arrange a transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps, which was less arduous but more unpleasant, and so transferred again to the Press Corps, which he found suited him better.

Wallace began publishing songs and poetry, much inspired by Rudyard Kipling, whom he met in Cape Town in 1898. Wallace's first book of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was published that same year. In 1899, he bought his way out of the forces and turned to writing full-time. Remaining in Africa, he became a war correspondent, first for Reuters and then the Daily Mail (1900) and other periodicals during the Boer War.

In 1901, while in South Africa, Wallace married Ivy Maude Caldecott (1880?–1926), although her father, a Wesleyan missionary, Reverend William Shaw Caldecott, was strongly opposed to the marriage. The couple's first child, Eleanor Clare Hellier Wallace died suddenly from meningitis in 1903 and they returned to London soon after, deep in debt. Wallace worked for the Mail in London and began writing detective stories in a bid to earn quick money. A son, Bryan, was born in 1904 followed by a daughter, Patricia in 1908. In 1903, Wallace met his birth mother Polly, whom he had never known. Terminally ill, 60 years old, and living in poverty, she came to ask for money and was turned away. Polly died in the Bradford Infirmary later that year.

Unable to find any backer for his first book, Wallace set up his own publishing company, Tallis Press, which issued the thriller The Four Just Men (1905). Despite promotion in the Mail and good sales, the project was financially mismanaged and Wallace had to be bailed out by the Mail's proprietor Alfred Harmsworth, who was anxious that the farrago would reflect badly on his newspaper. Problems were compounded when inaccuracies in Wallace's reporting led to libel cases being brought against the Mail. Wallace was dismissed in 1907, the first reporter ever to be fired from the paper, and he found no other paper would employ him, given his reputation. The family lived continuously in a state of near-bankruptcy, Ivy having to sell her jewellery for food.

During 1907 Edgar travelled to the Congo Free State, to report on atrocities committed against the Congolese under King Leopold II of Belgium and the Belgian rubber companies, in which up to 15 million Congolese were killed. Isabel Thorne of the Weekly Tale-Teller penny magazine, invited Wallace to serialise stories inspired by his experiences. These were published as his first collection Sanders of the River (1911), a best seller, in 1935 adapted into a film with the same name, starring Paul Robeson. Wallace went on to publish 11 more similar collections (102 stories). They were tales of exotic adventure and local tribal rites, set on an African river, mostly without love interest as this held no appeal for Wallace. His first 28 books and their film rights he sold outright, with no royalties, for quick money. Critic David Pringle noted in 1987 "The Sanders Books are not frequently reprinted nowadays, perhaps because of their overt racism".

The period from 1908 to 1932 were the most prolific of Wallace's life. Initially he wrote mainly in order to satisfy creditors in the UK and South Africa. The success of his books began to rehabilitate his reputation as a journalist and he began reporting from horse racing circles. He wrote for the Week-End and the Evening News, becoming an editor for Week-End Racing Supplement and started his own racing papers Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, buying many racehorses of his own. He lost many thousands gambling and despite his success spent large sums on an extravagant lifestyle he could not afford. During 1916, Ivy had her last child, Michael Blair Wallace by Edgar and filed for divorce in 1918.

Ivy moved to Tunbridge Wells with the children and Wallace drew closer to his secretary Ethel Violet King (1896–1933), daughter of banker Frederick King. They married in 1921 and Penelope Wallace was born to them in 1923. Wallace began to take his fiction writing career more seriously and signed with publishers Hodder and Stoughton in 1921, organising his contracts, instead of selling rights to his work piecemeal in order to raise funds. This allowed him advances, royalties and full scale promotional campaigns for his books, which he had never before had. They aggressively advertised him as a celebrity writer, ‘King of Thrillers’, known for this trademark trilby, cigarette holder and yellow Rolls Royce. He was said to be able to write a 70 000 word novel in three days and plough through three novels at once and indeed the publishers agreed to publish everything he wrote as fast as he could write it. In 1928 it was estimated that one in four books being read in the UK had come from Wallace's pen. He wrote across many genres including science fiction, screen plays, a non-fiction ten-volume history of the First World War. All told, he wrote over 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories, his works translated into 28 languages. The critic Wheeler W. Dixon suggests that Wallace became somewhat of a public joke for this prodigious output.

Wallace served as chairman of the Press Club, which continues to present an annual 'Edgar Wallace Award' for excellence in writing. Following the great success of his novel The Ringer, Wallace was appointed chairman of the British Lion Film Corporation in return for giving British Lion first option on all his output. Wallace's contract gave him an annual salary, a substantial block of stock in the company, plus a large stipend from everything British Lion produced based on his work, plus 10% of British Lion's overall annual profits. Additionally, British Lion employed his elder son Bryan E. Wallace as a film editor. By 1929, Wallace's earnings were almost £50,000 per annum, (equivalent to about £2 million in current terms). He also invented at this time the 'Luncheon Club', bringing together his two greatest loves of journalism and horse-racing.

Wallace was the first British crime novelist to use policemen as his protagonists, rather than amateur sleuths as most other writers of the time did. Most of his novels are independent stand-alone stories; he seldom used series heroes, and when he did he avoided a strict story order, so that continuity was not required from book to book. On 6 June 1923, Edgar Wallace became the first British radio sports reporter, when he made a report on the Epsom Derby for the British Broadcasting Company, the newly founded predecessor of the BBC.

Wallace's ex-wife Ivy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1923 and though the tumour was successfully removed, it returned terminally by 1925 and she died in 1926.

Wallace wrote a controversial article in the mid-1920s entitled "The Canker In Our Midst" about paedophilia and the show business world. Describing how some show business people unwittingly leave their children vulnerable to predators, it linked paedophilia with homosexuality and outraged many of his colleagues, publishing associates and business friends including theatre mogul Gerald du Maurier. Biographer Margaret Lane describes it as an "intolerant, blustering, kick-the-blighters-down-the-stairs" type of essay, even by the standards of the day.

Wallace became active in the Liberal Party and contested Blackpool in the 1931 general election as one of a handful of Independent Liberals, who rejected the National Government, and the official Liberal support for it, and strongly supported free trade. He also bought the Sunday News and edited it for six months, writing a theatre column, before it closed. In the event, he lost the election by over 33,000 votes. He went to America, burdened by debt, in November 1931. Around the same time, he wrote the screenplay for the first sound film adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1932) produced by Gainsborough Pictures.

Moving to Hollywood, he began working as a "script doctor" for RKO. His later play, The Green Pack had also opened to excellent reviews, boosting his status even further. Wallace wanted to get his own work on Hollywood celluloid, adapting books such as The Four Just Men and Mr J G Reeder. In Hollywood he met Stanley Holloway's scriptwriter, his own half-brother Marriott Edgar. Wallace's play On the Spot, written about gangster Al Capone, would prove to be the writer's greatest theatrical success. It is described as "arguably, in construction, dialogue, action, plot and resolution, still one of the finest and purest of 20th-century melodramas". (The Independent, 2000). It launched the career of Charles Laughton who played the lead Capone character Tony Perelli.

In December 1931, Wallace was assigned work on the RKO "gorilla picture" (King Kong, 1933) for producer Merian C. Cooper. By late January, however, he was beginning to suffer sudden, severe headaches and was diagnosed with diabetes. His condition deteriorated within days. Violet booked passage on a liner out of Southampton, but received word that Edgar had slipped into a coma and died of the condition, combined with double pneumonia, on 10 February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. The flags on Fleet Street's newspaper offices flew at half-mast and the bell of St. Bride's tolled in mourning. He was buried at Little Marlow Cemetery, Fern Lane, Buckinghamshire, not far from his UK country home, Chalklands, in Bourne End.

Despite his later success, Wallace had amassed massive debts, some still remaining from his years in South Africa, many to racing bookies. The large royalties from his greatly popular works allowed the estate to be settled within two years. Violet Wallace outlived her husband by only 14 months, dying suddenly in April 1933 at the age of 33 while the estate was still deep in debt.

(source wikipedia.org)

Edgar Wallace

THE FELLOWSHIPOF THE FROG

Arcadia ebook 2016

Design and graphic: facilebook

www.facilebook.it

THE FELLOWSHIPOF THE FROG

FOREWORDTHE FROGS

It was of interest to those who study the psychology of the mass that, until the prosperous but otherwise insignificant James G. Bliss became the object of their attention, the doings and growth of the Frogs were almost unnoticed. There were strong references in some of the country newspapers to the lawless character of the association; one Sunday journal had an amusing article headed:

"TRAMPS' TRADE UNION TAKES FROG FOR SYMBOL OF MYSTIC ORDER"

It gave a humorous and quite fanciful extract from its rules and ritual. The average man made casual references: "I say, have you seen this story about the tramps' Union—every member a walking delegate?…"

There was a more serious leading article on the growth of trade unionism, in which the Frogs were cited, and although from time to time came accounts of mysterious outrages which had been put to the discredit of the Frogs, the generality of citizens regarded the society, order, or whatever it was, as something benevolent in its intentions and necessarily eccentric in its constitution, and, believing this, were in their turn benevolently tolerant. In some such manner as the mass may learn with mild interest of a distant outbreak of epidemic disease, which slays its few, and wake one morning to find the sinister malady tapping at their front doors, so did the world become alive and alarmed at the terror-growth which suddenly loomed from the mists.

James G. Bliss was a hardware merchant, and a man well known on exchange, where he augmented the steady profits of the Bliss General Hardware Corporation with occasional windfalls from legitimate speculation. A somewhat pompous and, in argument, aggressive person, he had the advantage which mediocrity, blended with a certain expansive generosity, gives to a man, in that he had no enemies; and since his generosity was run on sane business principles, it could not even be said of him, as is so often said of others, that his worst enemy was himself. He held, and still holds, the bulk of the stock in the B.G.H. Corporation—a fact which should be noted because it was a practice of Mr. Bliss to manipulate from time to time the price of his shares by judicious operations. It was at a time coincident with the little boom in industrials which brought Bliss Hardware stock at a jump from 12.50 to 23.75, that the strange happening occurred which focussed for the moment all eyes upon the Frogs.

Mr. Bliss has a country place at Long Beach, Hampshire. It is referred to as "The Hut," but is the sort of hut that King Solomon might have built for the Queen of Sheba, had that adventurous man been sufficiently well acquainted with modern plumbing, the newest systems of heating and lighting, and the exigent requirements of up-to-date chauffeurs. In these respects Mr. Bliss was wiser than Solomon.

He had returned to his country home after a strenuous day in the City, and was walking in the garden in the cool of the evening. He was (and is) married, but his wife and two daughters were spending the spring in Paris—a wise course, since the spring is the only season when Paris has the slightest pretensions to being a beautiful city.

He had come from his kennels, and was seen walking across the home park toward a covert which bordered his property. Hearing a scream, his kennel man and a groom ran toward the wood, to discover Bliss lying on the ground unconscious, his face and shoulders covered with blood. He had been struck down by some heavy weapon: there were a slight fracture of the parietal bone and several very ugly scalp wounds.

For three weeks this unfortunate man hovered between life and death, unconscious except at intervals, and unable during his lucid moments to throw any light on, or make any coherent statement concerning, the assault, except to murmur, "Frog… frog… left arm… frog."

It was the first of many similar outrages, seemingly purposeless and wanton, in no case to be connected with robbery, and invariably (except once) committed upon people who occupied fairly unimportant positions in the social hierarchy. The Frogs advanced instantly to a first-class topic. The disease was found to be widespread, and men who had read, light-heartedly, of minor victimizations, began to bolt their own doors and carry lethal weapons when they went abroad at nights.

And they were wise, for there was a force in being that had been born in fear and had matured in obscurity (to the wonder of its creator) so that it wielded the tyrannical power of governments.

In the centre of many ramifications sat the Frog, drunk with authority, merciless, terrible. One who lived two lives and took full pleasure from both, and all the time nursing the terror that Saul Morris had inspired one foggy night in London, when the grimy streets were filled with armed policemen looking for the man who cleaned the strong-room of the S.S. Mantania of three million pounds between the port of Southampton and the port of Cherbourg.

I.AT MAYTREE COTTAGE

A dry radiator coincided with a burst tyre. The second coincidence was the proximity of Maytree Cottage on the Horsham Road. The cottage was larger than most, with a timbered front and a thatched roof. Standing at the gate, Richard Gordon stopped to admire. The house dated back to the days of Elizabeth, but his interest and admiration were not those of the antiquary.

Nor, though he loved flowers, of the horticulturist, though the broad garden was a patchwork of colour and the fragrance of cabbage roses came to delight his senses. Nor was it the air of comfort and cleanliness that pervaded the place, the scrubbed red-brick pathway that led to the door, the spotless curtains behind leaded panes.

It was the girl, in the red-lined basket chair, that arrested his gaze. She sat on a little lawn in the shade of a mulberry tree, with her shapely young limbs stiffly extended, a book in her hand, a large box of chocolates by her side. Her hair, the colour of old gold, an old gold that held life and sheen; a flawless complexion, and, when she turned her head in his direction, a pair of grave, questioning eyes, deeper than grey, yet greyer than blue…

She drew up her feet hurriedly and rose.

"I'm so sorry to disturb you,"—Dick, hat in hand, smiled his apology—"but I want water for my poor little Lizzie. She's developed a prodigious thirst."

She frowned for a second, and then laughed.

"Lizzie—you mean a car? If you'll come to the back of the cottage I'll show you where the well is."

He followed, wondering who she was. The tiny hint of patronage in her tone he understood. It was the tone of matured girlhood addressing a boy of her own age. Dick, who was thirty and looked eighteen, with his smooth, boyish face, had been greeted in that "little boy" tone before, and was inwardly amused.

"Here is the bucket and that is the well," she pointed. "I would send a maid to help you, only we haven't a maid, and never had a maid, and I don't think ever shall have a maid!"

"Then some maid has missed a very good job," said Dick, "for this garden is delightful."

She neither agreed nor dissented. Perhaps she regretted the familiarity she had shown. She conveyed to him an impression of aloofness, as she watched the process of filling the buckets, and when he carried them to the car on the road outside, she followed.

"I thought it was a—a—what did you call it—Lizzie?"

"She is Lizzie to me," said Dick stoutly as he filled the radiator of the big Rolls, "and she will never be anything else. There are people who think she should be called 'Diana,' but those high-flown names never had any attraction for me. She is Liz—and will always be Liz."

She walked round the machine, examining it curiously.

"Aren't you afraid to be driving a big car like that?" she asked. "I should be scared to death. It is so tremendous and…and unmanageable."

Dick paused with a bucket in hand.

"Fear," he boasted, "is a word which I have expunged from the bright lexicon of my youth."

For a second puzzled, she began to laugh softly.

"Did you come by way of Welford?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I wonder if you saw my father on the road?"

"I saw nobody on the road except a sour-looking gentleman of middle age who was breaking the Sabbath by carrying a large brown box on his back."

"Where did you pass him?" she asked, interested.

"Two miles away—less than that." And then, a doubt intruding: "I hope that I wasn't describing your parent?"

"It sounds rather like him," she said without annoyance. "Daddy is a naturalist photographer. He takes moving pictures of birds and things—he is an amateur, of course."

"Of course," agreed Dick.

He brought the buckets back to where he had found them and lingered. Searching for an excuse, he found it in the garden. How far he might have exploited this subject is a matter for conjecture. Interruption came in the shape of a young man who emerged from the front door of the cottage. He was tall and athletic, good-looking…Dick put his age at twenty.

"Hello, Ella! Father back?" he began, and then saw the visitor.

"This is my brother," said the girl, and Dick Gordon nodded. He was conscious that this free-and-easy method of getting acquainted was due largely, if not entirely, to his youthful appearance. To be treated as an inconsiderable boy had its advantages. And so it appeared.

"I was telling him that boys ought not to be allowed to drive big cars," she said. "You remember the awful smash there was at the Shoreham cross roads?"

Ray Bennett chuckled.

"This is all part of a conspiracy to keep me from getting a motor- bicycle. Father thinks I'll kill somebody, and Ella thinks I'll kill myself."

Perhaps there was something in Dick Gordon's quick smile that warned the girl that she had been premature in her appraisement of his age, for suddenly, almost abruptly, she nodded an emphatic dismissal and turned away. Dick was at the gate when a further respite arrived. It was the man he had passed on the road. Tall, loose-framed, grey and gaunt of face, he regarded the stranger with suspicion in his deep-set eyes.

"Good morning," he said curtly. "Car broken down?"

"No, thank you. I ran out of water, and Miss—er—"

"Bennett," said the man. "She gave you the water, eh? Well, good morning."

He stood aside to let Gordon pass, but Dick opened the gate and waited till the owner of Maytree Cottage had entered.

"My name is Gordon," he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ella had turned back and stood with her brother within earshot. "I am greatly obliged to you for your kindness." The old man, with a nod, went on carrying his heavy burden into the house, and Dick in desperation turned to the girl.

"You are wrong when you think this is a difficult car to drive— won't you experiment? Or perhaps your brother?"

The girl hesitated, but not so young Bennett.

"I'd like to try," he said eagerly. "I've never handled a big machine."

That he could handle one if the opportunity came, he showed. They watched the car gliding round the corner, the girl with a little frown gathering between her eyes, Dick Gordon oblivious to everything except that he had snatched a few minutes' closer association with the girl. He was behaving absurdly, he told himself. He, a public official, an experienced lawyer, was carrying on like an irresponsible, love-smitten youth of nineteen. The girl's words emphasized his folly.

"I wish you hadn't let Ray drive," she said. "It doesn't help a boy who is always wanting something better, to put him in charge of a beautiful car…perhaps you don't understand me. Ray is very ambitious and dreams in millions. A thing like this unsettles him."

The older man came out at that moment, a black pipe between his teeth, and, seeing the two at the gate, a cloud passed over his face.

"Let him drive your car, have you?" he said grimly. "I wish you hadn't—it was very kind of you, Mr. Gordon, but in Ray's case a mistaken kindness."

"I'm very sorry," said the penitent Dick. "Here he comes!" The big car spun toward them and halted before the gate.

"She's a beauty!"

Ray Bennett jumped out and looked at the machine with admiration and regret.

"My word, if she were mine!"

"She isn't," snapped the old man, and then, as though regretting his petulance: "Some day perhaps you'll own a fleet, Ray—are you going to London, Mr. Gordon?"

Dick nodded.

"Maybe you wouldn't care to stop and eat a very frugal meal with us?" asked the elder Bennett, to his surprise and joy. "And you'll be able to tell this foolish son of mine that owning a big car isn't all joy-riding."

Dick's first impression was of the girl's astonishment. Apparently he was unusually honoured, and this was confirmed after John Bennett had left them.

"You're the first boy that has ever been asked to dinner," she said when they were alone. "Isn't he, Ray?" Ray smiled.

"Dad doesn't go in for the social life, and that's a fact," he said. "I asked him to have Philo Johnson down for a week-end, and he killed the idea before it was born. And the old philosopher is a good fellow and the boss's confidential secretary. You've heard of Maitlands Consolidated, I suppose?"

Dick nodded. The marble palace on the Strand Embankment in which the fabulously rich Mr. Maitland operated, was one of the show buildings of London.

"I'm in his office—exchange clerk," said the young man, "and Philo could do a whole lot for me if dad would pull out an invitation. As it is, I seem doomed to be a clerk for the rest of my life."

The white hand of the girl touched his lips.

"You'll be rich some day, Ray dear, and it is foolish to blame daddy."

The young man growled something under the hand, and then laughed a little bitterly.

"Dad has tried every get-rich-quick scheme that the mind and ingenuity of man—"

"And why?"

The voice was harsh, tremulous with anger. None of them had noticed the reappearance of John Bennett.

"You're doing work you don't like. My God! What of me? I've been trying for twenty years to get out. I've tried every silly scheme—that's true. But it was for you—"

He stopped abruptly at the sight of Gordon's embarrassment.

"I invited you to dinner, and I'm pulling out the family skeleton," he said with rough good-humour.

He took Dick's arm and led him down the garden path between the serried ranks of rose bushes.

"I don't know why I asked you to stay, young man," he said. "An impulse, I suppose… maybe a bad conscience. I don't give these young people all the company they ought to have at home, and I'm not much of a companion for them. It's too bad that you should be the witness of the first family jar we've had for years."

His voice and manner were those of an educated man. Dick wondered what occupation he followed, and why it should be so particularly obnoxious that he should be seeking some escape.

The girl was quiet throughout the meal. She sat at Dick's left hand and she spoke very seldom. Stealing an occasional glance at her, he thought she looked preoccupied and troubled, and blamed his presence as the cause.

Apparently no servant was kept at the cottage. She did the waiting herself, and she had replaced the plates when the old man asked:

"I shouldn't think you were as young as you look, Mr. Gordon—what do you do for a living?"

"I'm quite old," smiled Dick. "Thirty-one."

"Thirty-one?" gasped Ella, going red. "And I've been talking to you as though you were a child!"

"Think of me as a child at heart," he said gravely. "As to my occupation—I'm a persecutor of thieves and murderers and bad characters generally. My name is Richard Gordon—"

The knife fell with a clatter from John Bennett's hand and his face went white.

"Gordon—Richard Gordon?" he said hollowly.

For a second their eyes met, the clear blue and the faded blue.

"Yes—I am the Assistant Director of Prosecutions," said Gordon quietly. "And I have an idea that you and I have met before."

The pale eyes did not waver. John Bennett's face was a mask.

"Not professionally, I hope," he said, and there was a challenge in his voice.

Dick laughed again as at the absurdity of the question. "Not professionally," he said with mock gravity.

On his way back to London that night his memory worked overtime, but he failed to place John Bennett of Horsham.