She was half-mad with grief and terror, and Dick caught her firmly by the shoulders, the dumbfounded Silenski gaping at the scene.
“You are going back to my house and you will read! Do you hear, Ella? You’re to do nothing until you hear from me. You are not to go out; you are to sit and read! I don’t care what you read—the Bible, the Police News, anything you like. But you must not think of this business. Elk and I will do all that is possible.”
She mastered her wild terror and tried to smile.
“I know you will,” she said between her chattering teeth. “Get me to your house, please.”
He left Elk to go to Fleet Street to collect every scrap of information about the murder he could from the newspaper offices, and brought the girl back to Harley Terrace. As he got out of the cab, he saw a man waiting on the steps. It was Joshua Broad. One glance at his face told Dick that he knew of the murder, and he guessed the source.
He waited in the hall until Dick had put the girl in the study, and had collected every illustrated newspaper, every book he could find.
“Lola told me of this business.”
“I guessed so,” said Dick. “Do you know anything about it?”
“I knew these two men started out in the disguise of tramps,” said Broad, “but I understood they were going north. This is Frog work—why?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I do,” Dick said suddenly. “The Frog came to Miss Bennett last night and asked her to marry him, promising that he would save her brother if she agreed. But it can hardly be that he planned this diabolical trick to that end.”