“Sooner or later you’ll have a number,” said Dick calmly. “You and your crowd are having the time of your young lives—perhaps because I’m incompetent, or because I’m unfortunate. But some day we shall get you, either I or my successor. You can’t fight the law and win because the law is everlasting and constant.”
“A search of my flat I don’t mind—but a sermon I will not have,” she said contemptuously. “And now, if you men have finished, I should like to get a little beauty sleep.”
“That is the one thing you don’t require,” said the gallant Elk, and she laughed.
“You’re not a bad man, Elk,” she said. “You’re a bad detective, but you’ve a heart of gold.”
“If I had, I shouldn’t trust myself alone with you,” was Elk’s parting shot.
CHAPTER XIX
IN ELSHAM WOOD
DICK GORDON, in the sudden lightening of his heart which had come to him when he realized that his horrible fears were without foundation, was inclined to regard the night as having been well spent. This was not Elk’s view. He was genuinely grave as they drove back to headquarters.
“I’m frightened of these Frogs, and I admit it,” he confessed. “There’s a bad leakage somewhere—how should she know that I put Balder in with Hagn? That has staggered me. Nobody but two men, in addition to ourselves, is in the secret; and if the Frogs are capable of getting that kind of news, it is any odds on Hagn knowing that he is being drawn. They frighten me, I tell you, Captain Gordon. If they only knew a little, and hadn’t got that quite right, I should be worried. But they know everything!”
Dick nodded.