IN REGARD TO SAUL MORRIS
DICK GORDON ’phoned across to headquarters, and Elk reported
immediately.
“I’ve discovered six good get-away bags, and each one is equipped as
completely and exactly as the one we found at King’s Cross.”
“No clue as to the gentleman who deposited them?”
“No, sir, not so much as a clue. We’ve tested them all for
finger-prints, and we’ve got a few results; but as they have been
handled by half a dozen attendants, I don’t think we shall get much out
of it. Still, we can but try.”
“Elk, I would give a few years of my life to get to the inside of this
Frog mystery. I’m having Lola shadowed, though I shouldn’t think she’d
be in that lot. I know of nobody who looks less like a tramp than Lola
Bassano! Lew has disappeared, and when I sent a man round this morning
to discover what had happened to that young man about town, Mr. Raymond
Bennett, he was not visible. He refused to see the caller on the plea
that he was ill, and is staying in his room all day. Elk, who’s the
Frog?”
Elk paced up and down the apartment, his hands in his pockets, his
steel-rimmed spectacles sliding lower and lower down his long nose.
“There are only two possibilities,” he said. “One is Harry Lyme—an
ex-convict who was supposed to have been drowned in the _Channel Queen_
some years ago. I put him amongst them, because all the records we have
of him show that he was a brilliant organizer, a super-crook, and one of
the two men capable of opening Lord Farmley’s safe and slipping that
patent catch on Johnson’s window. And believe me, Captain Gordon, it was
an artist who burgled Johnson!”
“The other man?” said Dick.
“He’s also comfortably dead,” said Elk grimly. “Saul Morris, the
cleverest of all. He’s got Lyme skinned to death—an expression I picked
up in my recent travels, Captain. And Morris is American; and although
I’m as patriotic as any man in this country, I hand it to the Americans
when it comes to smashing safes. I’ve examined two thousand records of
known criminals, and I’ve fined it down to these two fellows—and
they’re both dead! They say that dead men leave no trails, and if Frog
is Morris or Lyme, they’re about right. Lyme’s dead—drowned. Morris was
killed in a railway accident in the United States. The question is,
which of the ghosts we can charge.”
Dick Gordon pulled open the drawer of his desk and took out an envelope
that bore the inscription of the Western Union. He threw it across the
table.
“What’s this. Captain Gordon?”
“It’s an answer to a question. You mentioned Saul Morris before, and I
have been making inquiries in New York. Here’s the reply.”
The cablegram was from the Chief of Police, New York City.
“Answering your inquiry. Saul Morris is alive, and is believed
to be in England at this moment. No charges pending against him
here, but generally supposed to be the man who cleared out
strong room of ss. _Mantania_, February 17, 1898, Southampton,
England, and got away with 55,000,000 francs. Acknowledge.”
Elk read and re-read the cablegram, then he folded it carefully, put it
back in its envelope and passed it across the table.
“Saul Morris is in England,” he said mechanically. “That seems to
explain a whole lot.”
The search which detectives had conducted at the railway termini had
produced nine bags, all of which contained identical outfits. In every
case there was a spare suit, a clean shirt, two collars, one tie, a
Browning pistol with cartridges, a forged passport without photograph,
the Annatio and money. Only in one respect did the grips differ. At
Paddington the police had recovered one which was a little larger than
its fellows, all of which were of the same pattern and size. This held
the same outfit as the remainder, with the exception that, in addition,
there was a thick pad of cheque forms, every cheque representing a
different branch of a different bank. There were cheques upon the Credit
Lyonnais, upon the Ninth National Bank of New York, upon the Burrowstown
Trust, upon the Bank of Spain, the Banks of Italy and Roumania, in
addition to about fifty branches of the five principal banks of England.
Occupied as he had been, Elk had not had time to make a very close
inspection, but in the morning he determined to deal seriously with the
cheques. He was satisfied that inquiries made at the banks and branches
would reveal different depositors; but the numbers might enable him to
bring the ownership home to one man or one group of men.
As the bags were brought in, they had been examined superficially and
placed in Elk’s safe, and to accommodate them, the ordinary contents of
the safe had been taken out and placed in other repositories. Each bag
had been numbered and labelled with the name of the station from whence
it was taken, the name of the officer who had brought it in, and
particulars of its contents. These facts are important, as having a
bearing upon what subsequently happened.
Elk arrived at his office soon after ten o’clock, having enjoyed the
first full night’s sleep he had had for weeks. He had, as his
assistants, Balder and a detective-sergeant named Fayre, a promising
young man, in whom Elk placed considerable trust. Dick Gordon arrived
almost simultaneously with the detective chief, and they went into the
building together.
“There isn’t the ghost of a chance that we shall be rewarded for the
trouble we’ve taken to trace these cheques,” said Elk, “and I am
inclined to place more hope upon the possibility of the handbags
yielding a few items which were not apparent at first examination. All
these bags are lined, and there is a possibility that they have false
bottoms. I am going to cut them up thoroughly, and if there’s anything
left after I’m through, the Frogs are welcome to their secret.”
In the office, Balder and the detective-sergeant were waiting, and Elk
searched for his key. The production of the key of the safe was
invariably something of a ritual where Elk was concerned. He gave Dick
Gordon the impression that he was preparing to disrobe, for the key
reposed in some mysterious region which involved the loosening of coat,
waistcoat, and the diving into a pocket where no pocket should be.
Presently the ceremony was through, Elk solemnly inserted the key and
swung back the door.
The safe was so packed with bags that they began to slide toward him,
when the restraining pressure of the door was removed. One by one he
handed them out, and Fayre put them on the table.
“We’ll take that Paddington one first,” said Elk, pointing to the
largest of the bags. “And get me that other knife, Balder.”
The two men walked out into the passage, leaving Fayre alone.
“Can you see the end of this, Captain Gordon?” asked Elk.
“The end of the Frogs? Why, yes, I think I can. I could almost say I was
sure.”
They had reached the door of the clerk’s office and found Balder holding
a murderous looking weapon in his hand.
“Here it is——” he began, and the next instant Dick was flung violently
to the floor, with Elk on top of him.
There was the shrill shriek of smashed glass, a pressure of wind, and,
through all this violence, the deafening thunder of an explosion.
Elk was first to his feet and flew back to his room. The door hung on
its hinges; every pane of glass was gone, and the sashes with them. From
his room poured a dense volume of smoke, into which he plunged. He had
hardly taken a step before he tripped on the prostrate figure of Fayre,
and, stooping, he half-lifted and half-dragged him into the corridor.
One glance was sufficient to show that, if the man was not dead, there
seemed little hope of his recovery. The fire-bells were ringing
throughout the building. A swift rush of feet on the stairs, and the
fire squad came pelting down the corridor, dragging their hose behind
them.
What fire there was, was soon extinguished, but Elk’s office was a
wreck. Even the door of the safe had been blown from its hinges. There
was not a single article of furniture left, and a big hole gaped in the
floor.
“Save those bags,” said Elk and went back to look after the injured man,
and not until he had seen his assistant placed in the ambulance did he
return to a contemplation of the ruin which the bomb had made.
“Oh, yes, it was a bomb, sir,” said Elk.
A group of senior officers stood in the corridor, looking at the havoc.
“And something particularly heavy in the shape of bombs. The wonder is
that Captain Gordon and I were not there. I told Fayre to open the bag,
but I thought he’d wait until we returned with the knife—we intended
examining the lining. Fayre must have opened the bag and the bomb
exploded.”
“But weren’t the bags examined before?” asked the Commissioner
wrathfully.
Elk nodded.
“They were examined by me yesterday—every one. The Paddington bag was
turned inside out, every article it contained was placed on my table,
and catalogued. I myself returned them. There was no bomb.”
“But how could they be got at?” asked the other.
Elk shook his head.
“I don’t know, sir. The only other person who has a key to this safe is
the Assistant Commissioner of my department, Colonel McClintock, who is
on his holidays. We might all have been killed.”
“What was the explosive?”
“Dynamite,” said Elk promptly. “It blew down.” He pointed to the hole in
the floor. “Nitro-glycerine blows up and sideways,” he sniffed. “There’s
no doubt about it being dynamite.”
In his search of the office he found a twisted coil of thin steel, later
the blackened and crumpled face of a cheap alarm dock.
“Both time and contact,” he said. “Those Frogs are taking no chances.”
He shifted such of his belongings as he could discover into Balder’s
office.
There was little chance that this outrage would be kept from the
newspapers. The explosion had blown out the window and a portion of the
brickwork and had attracted a crowd on the Embankment outside. Indeed,
when Elk left headquarters, he was confronted by newspaper bills telling
of the event.
His first call was at the near-by hospital, to where the unfortunate
Fayre had been taken, and the news he received was encouraging. The
doctors thought that, with any kind of luck, they would not only save
the man’s life, but also save him from any serious mutilation.
“He may lose a finger or two, and he’s had a most amazing escape,” said
the house surgeon. “I can’t understand why he wasn’t blown to pieces.”
“What I can’t understand,” said Elk emphatically, “is why _I_ wasn’t
blown to pieces.”
The surgeon nodded.
“These high explosives play curious tricks,” said the surgeon. “I
understand that the force of the explosion blew off the door of the
safe, and yet this paper, which must also have been within range, is
scarcely singed.”
He took a square of paper out of his pocket; the edges were blackened;
one corner had been burnt off.
“I found this in his clothing. It must have been driven there when the
bomb detonated,” said the surgeon.
Elk smoothed out the paper and read:
“_With the compliments of Number Seven._”
Carefully he folded the paper.
“I’ll take this,” he said, and put it tenderly away in the interior of
his spectacle case. “Do you believe in hunches, doctor?”
“Do you mean premonitions?” smiled the surgeon. “To an extent I do.”
Elk nodded.
“I have a hunch that I’m going to meet Number Seven—very shortly,” he
said.