Elk shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Of course, she might have been persuading him to take back her brother, but old Maitland isn’t the kind of adventurer who’d get up in the middle of the night to discuss giving Ray Bennett his job back. If he was a younger man, yes. But he’s not young. He’s darned old. And he’s a wicked old man, who doesn’t care two cents whether Ray Bennett is working at his desk for so much per, or whether he’s breaking stones on Dartmoor. I tell you, that’s one of the minor mysteries which will be cleared up when we get the Frog piece in its place.”
The car stopped at the entrance of Cannon Row police-station, and the men jumped down. The desk sergeant stood up as they came in, and eyed them wonderingly.
“I’m going to take Balder out, sergeant.”
“Balder?” said the man in surprise. “I didn’t know Balder was in.”
“I put him in with Hagn.”
A light dawned upon the station official.
“That’s queer. I didn’t know it was Balder,” he said. “I wasn’t on duty when he came in, but the other sergeant told me that a man had been put in with Hagn. Here is the gaoler.”
That official came in at that moment, and was as astonished as the sergeant to learn the identity of the second prisoner.
“I had no idea it was Balder, sir,” he said. “That accounts for the long talk they had—they were talking up till one o’clock.”