In their presence her reserve had melted and she was near to tears.
“Gloucester Prison?” repeated Elk slowly. “There is a man there under sentence of death, a man named”—he strove to remember—“Carter,” he said at last. “That is it—Carter, a tramp. He killed another tramp named Phenan.”
“Of course it isn’t Ray,” said Dick, laying his hand on hers. “This brute tried to frighten you. When did he say the execution had been fixed for?”
“To-morrow.” She was weeping; now that the tension had relaxed, it seemed that she had reached the reserve of her strength.
“Ray is probably on the Continent,” Dick soothed her, and here Elk thought it expedient and delicate to steal silently forth.
He was not as convinced as Gordon that the Frog had made a bluff. No sooner was he in his office than he rang for his new clerk.
“Records,” he said briefly. “I want particulars of a man named Carter, now lying under sentence of death in Gloucester Prison—photograph, finger-prints, and record of the crime.”
The man was gone ten minutes, and returned with a small portfolio.
“No photograph has been received yet, sir,” he said. “In murder cases we do not get the full records from the County police until after the execution.”
Elk cursed the County police fluently, and addressed himself to the examination of the dossier. That told him little or nothing. The height and weight of the man tallied, he guessed, with Ray’s. There were no body marks and the description “Slight beard——”