THE CHEMICAL CORPORATION
ELK had promised to dine at Gordon’s club. Dick waited for him until twenty minutes past the hour of appointment, and Elk had neither telephoned nor put in an appearance. At twenty-five minutes past he arrived in a hurry.
“Good Lord!” he gasped, looking at the clock. “I had no idea it was so late, Captain. I must buy a watch.”
They went into the dining-hall together, and Elk felt that he was entering a church, there was such solemn dignity about the stately room, with its prim and silent diners.
“It certainly has Heron’s beat in the matter of Dicky-Orum.”
“I don’t know the gentleman,” said the puzzled Dick. “Oh, do you mean decorum? Yes, this is a little more sedate. What kept you, Elk? I’m not complaining, but when you’re not on time, I worry as to what has happened to you.”
“Nothing has happened to me,” said Elk, nodding pleasantly to an embarrassed club waiter. “Only we had an inquiry in Gloucester. I thought we’d struck another Frog case, but the two men involved had no Frog marks.”
“Who are they?”
“Phenan is one—he’s the man that’s dead.”
“A murder?”
“I think so,” said Elk, spearing a sardine. “I think he was thoroughly dead when they found him at Ibbley Copse. They pinched the man who was with him; he was drunk. Apparently they’d been to Laverstock and had quarrelled and fought in the bar of the Red Lion. The police were informed later, and telephoned through to the next village, to tell the constable to keep his eye on these two fellows, but they hadn’t passed through, so they sent a bicycle patrol to look for them—there’s been one or two housebreakings in that neighbourhood.”
“And they found them?”
Elk nodded.
“One man dead and the other man bottled. Apparently they’d quarrelled, and the drunken gentleman shot the other. They’re both tramps or of that class. Identification marks on them show they’ve come from Wales. They slept at Bath last night, at Rooney’s lodging-house, and that’s all that’s known of ’em. Carter is the murderer—they’ve taken him to Gloucester Gaol. It’s a very simple case, and the Gloucester police gave a haughty smile at the idea of calling in Headquarters. It is a crime, anyway, that is up to the intellectual level of the country police.”
Dick’s lips twitched.
“Just now, the country police are passing unpleasant comments on our intelligence,” he said.
“Let ’um,” scoffed Elk. “Those people are certainly entitled to their simple pleasures, and I’d be the last to deny them the right. I saw John Bennett in town to-night, at Paddington this time. I’m always knocking against him at railway stations. That man is certainly a traveller. He had his old camera with him too. I spoke to him this time, and he’s full of trouble: went to sleep, pushed the gadget in his dreams and wasted a fortune in film. But he’s pleased with himself, and I don’t wonder. I saw a note about his pictures the other day in one of the newspapers. He looks like turning into a first-class success.”
“I sincerely hope so,” said Dick quietly, and something in his tone made his guest look up.
“Which reminds me,” he said, “that I had a note from friend Johnson asking me whether I knew Ray Bennett’s address. He said he called up Heron’s Club, but Ray hadn’t been there for days. He wants to give him a job. Quite a big position, too. There’s a lot that’s very fine in Johnson.”
“Did you give the address?”
Elk nodded.
“I gave him the address, and I called on the boy, but he’s out of town—went out a few days ago, and is not likely to be back for a fortnight. It will be too bad if he loses this job. I think Johnson was sore with the side young Bennett put on, but he doesn’t seem to bear any malice. Perhaps there’s another influence at work,” he said significantly.
Dick knew that he meant Ella, but did not accept the opening.
They adjourned to the smoke-room after dinner, and whilst Elk puffed luxuriously at one of his host’s best cigars, Dick wrote a brief note to the girl, who had been in his thoughts all that day. It was an unnecessary note, as such epistles are liable to be; but it might have had, as its excuse, the news that he had heard from Elk, only, for some reason, he never thought of that until after the letter was finished and sealed. When he turned to his companion, Elk propounded a theory.
“I sent a man up to look at some chemical works. It’s a fake company—less than a dozen hands employed, and those only occasionally. But it has a very powerful electrical installation. It is an old poison gas factory. The present company bought it for a song, and two fellows we are holding were the nominal purchasers.”
“Where is it?” asked Dick.
“Between Newbury and Didcot. I found out a great deal about them for a curious reason. It appears there was some arrangement between the factory, when it was under Government control, that it should make an annual contribution to the Newbury Fire Brigade, and, in taking over the property, the company also took over that contract, which they’re now trying to get out of, for the charge is a stiff one. They told the Newbury Brigade, in so many words, to disconnect the factory from their alarm service, but the Newbury Brigade, being on a good thing and having lost money by the arrangement during the war, refused to cancel the contract, which has still three years to run.”
Dick was not interested in the slightest degree in the quarrel between the chemical factory and the fire brigade. Later, he had cause to be thankful that conversation had drifted into such a prosaic channel; but this he could not foresee.
“Yes, very remarkable,” he said absent-mindedly.
* * * * * *
A fortnight after the disappearance from town of Ray Bennett, Elk accepted the invitation of the American to lunch. It was an invitation often given, and only accepted now because there had arisen in Elk’s mind a certain doubt about Joshua Broad—a doubt which he wished to mould into assurance.
Broad was waiting for the detective when he arrived, and Elk, to whom time had no particular significance, arrived ten minutes late.
“Ten minutes after one,” said Elk. “I can’t keep on time anyhow. There’s been a lot of trouble at the office over the new safe they’ve got me. Somethin’s wrong with it, and even the lock-maker doesn’t know what it is.”
“Can’t you open it?”
“That’s just it, I can’t, and I’ve got to get some papers out to-day that are mighty important,” said Elk. “I was wondering, as I came along, whether, having such a wide experience of the criminal classes, you’ve ever heard any way by which it could be opened—it needs a proper engineer, and, if I remember rightly, you told me you were an engineer once, Mr. Broad?”
“Your memory is at fault,” said the other calmly as he unfolded his napkin and regarded the detective with a twinkle in his eye. “Safe-opening is not my profession.”
“And I never dreamt it was,” said Elk heartily. “But it has always struck me that the Americans are much more clever with their hands than the people in this country, and I thought that you might be able to give me a word of advice.”
“Maybe I’ll introduce you to my pet burglar,” said Broad gravely, and they laughed together. “What do you think of me?” asked the American unexpectedly. “I’m not expecting you to give your view of my character or personal appearance, but what do you think I am doing in London, dodging around, doing nothing but a whole lot of amateur police work?”
“I’ve never given you much thought,” said Elk untruthfully. “Being an American, I expect you to be out of the ordinary——”
“Flatterer,” murmured Mr. Broad.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to flatter you,” protested Elk. “Flattery is repugnant to me anyway.”
He unfolded an evening newspaper he had brought.
“Looking for those tailless amphibians?”
“Eh?” Elk looked up puzzled.
“Frogs,” explained the other.
“No, I’m not exactly looking for Frogs, though I understand a few of ’em are looking for me. As a matter of fact, there’s very little in the newspaper about those interesting animals, but there’s going to be!”
“When?”
The question was a challenge.
“When we get Frog Number One.”
Mr. Broad crumpled a roll in his hand, and broke it.
“Do you think you’ll get Number One before I get him?” he asked quietly, and Elk looked across the table over his spectacles.
“I’ve been wondering that for a long time,” he said, and for a second their eyes met.
“Do you think I shall get him?” asked Broad.
“If all my speculations and surmises are what they ought to be, I think you will,” said Elk, and suddenly his attention was focussed upon a paragraph. “Quick work,” he said. “We beat you Americans in that respect.”
“In what respect is that?” asked Broad. “I’m sufficient of a cosmopolitan to agree that there are many things in England which you do better than we in America.”
Elk looked up at the ceiling.
“Fifteen days?” he said. “Of course, he just managed to catch the Assizes.”
“Who’s that?”
“That man Carter, who shot a tramp near Gloucester,” said Elk.
“What has happened to him?” asked the other.
“He was sentenced to death this morning,” said the detective.
Joshua Broad frowned.
“Sentenced to death this morning? Carter, you say? I didn’t read the story of the murder.”
“There was nothing complicated about it,” said Elk. “Two tramps had a quarrel—I think they got drinking—and one shot the other and was found lying in a drunken sleep by the dead man’s side. There’s practically no evidence; the prisoner refused to make any statement, or to instruct a lawyer—it must have been one of the shortest murder trials on record.”
“Where did this happen?” asked Broad, arousing himself from the reverie into which he had fallen.
“Near Gloucester. There was little in the paper; it wasn’t a really interesting murder. There was no woman in it, so far as the evidence went, and who cared a cent about two tramps?”
He folded the paper and put it down, and for the rest of the meal was engaged in a much more fascinating discussion, the police methods of the United States, on which matter Mr. Broad was, apparently, something of an authority.
The object of the American’s invitation was very apparent. Again and again he attempted to turn the conversation to the man under arrest; and as skilfully as he introduced the subject of Balder, did Elk turn the discussion back to the merits of the third degree as a method of crime detection.
“Elk, you’re as close as an oyster,” said Broad, beckoning a waiter to bring his bill. “And yet I could tell you almost as much about this man Balder as you know.”
“Tell me the prison he’s in?” demanded Elk.
“He’s in Pentonville, Ward Seven, Cell Eighty-four,” said the other immediately, and Elk sat bolt upright. “And you needn’t trouble to shift him to somewhere else, just because I happen to know his exact location; I should be just as well informed if he was at Brixton, Wandsworth, Holloway, Wormwood Scrubbs, Maidstone, or Chelmsford.”