“Yes, sir,” said the man. “I think they were sending from very close at hand.”
“In what part of town would you say it would be?” asked Elk.
The officer indicated a pencil mark that he had ruled across the page.
“It is somewhere on this mark,” he said, and Elk, peering over, saw that the line passed through Cavendish Square and Cavendish Place and that, whilst the Portsmouth line missed Cavendish Place only by a block, the Harwich line crossed the Plymouth line a little to the south of the square.
“Caverley House, obviously,” said Dick.
He wanted to get out in the open, he wanted to talk, to discuss this monstrous thing with Elk. Had the detective also recognized the voice, he wondered? Any doubt he had on that point was set at rest. He had hardly reached Whitehall before Elk said:
“Sounded very like a friend of ours, Captain Gordon?”
Dick made no reply.
“Very like,” said Elk as if he were speaking half to himself. “In fact, I’ll take any number of oaths that I know the young lady who was talking for old man Frog.”
“Why should she do it?” groaned Dick. “Why, for the love of heaven, should she do it?”