THE AWAKENING
THROUGHOUT the night Ella Bennett lay, half waking, half sleeping. She
remembered the doctor coming; she remembered Elk’s urgent request that
she should drink the draught he had prepared; and though she had
suspected its nature and at first had fought against drinking that
milky-white potion, she had at last succumbed, and had lain down on the
sofa, determined that she would not sleep until she knew the worst or
the best. She was exhausted with the mental fight she had put up to
preserve her sanity, and then she had dozed.
She was dimly conscious, as she came back to understanding, that she was
lying on a bed, and that somebody had taken off her shoes and loosened
her hair. With a tremendous effort she opened her eyes and saw a woman,
sitting by a window, reading. The room was intensely masculine; it smelt
faintly of smoke.
“Dick’s bed,” she muttered, and the woman put down her book and got up.
Ella looked at her, puzzled. Why did she wear those white bands about
her hair, and that butcher-blue wrapper and the white cuffs? She was a
nurse, of course. Satisfied with having solved that problem, Ella closed
her eyes and went back again into the land of dreams.
She woke again. The woman was still there, but this time the girl’s mind
was in order.
“What time is it?” she asked.
The nurse came over with a glass of water, and Ella drank greedily.
“It is seven o’clock,” she said.
“Seven!” The girl shivered, and then, with a cry, tried to rise. “It is
evening!” she gasped. “Oh, what happened?”
“Your father is downstairs, miss,” said the nurse. “I’ll call him.”
“Father—here?” She frowned. “Is there any other news?”
“Mr. Gordon is downstairs too, miss, and Mr. Johnson.”
The woman was faithfully carrying out the instructions which had been
given to her.
“Nobody—else?” asked Ella in a whisper.
“No, miss, the other gentleman is coming to-morrow or the next day—your
brother, I mean.”
With a sob the girl buried her face in the pillow.
“You are not telling the truth!”
“Oh yes, I am,” said the woman, and there was something in her laugh
which made Ella look up.
The nurse went out of the room and was gone a little while. Presently
the door opened, and John Bennett came in. Instantly she was in his
arms, sobbing her joy.
“It is true, it is true, daddy?”
“Yes, my love, it is true,” said Bennett. “Ray will be here to-morrow.
There are some formalities to be gone through; they can’t secure a
release immediately, as they do in story-books. We are discussing his
future. Oh, my girl, my poor girl!”
“When did you know, daddy?”
“I knew this morning,” said her father quietly.
“Were you—were you dreadfully hurt?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Johnson wants to give Ray the management of Maitlands Consolidated,” he
said. “It would be a splendid thing for Ray. Ella, our boy has changed.”
“Have you seen him?” she asked in surprise.
“Yes, I saw him this morning.”
She thought it was natural that her father should have seen him, and did
not question him as to how he managed to get behind the jealously
guarded doors of the prison.
“I don’t think Ray will accept Johnson’s offer,” he said. “If I know him
as he is now, I am sure he will not accept. He will not take any
ready-made position; he wants to work for himself. He is coming back to
us, Ella.”
She wanted to ask him something, but feared to hurt him.
“Daddy, when Ray comes back,” she said after a long silence, “will it be
possible for you to leave this—this work you hate so much?”
“I have left it, dear,” he replied quietly. “Never again—never
again—never again, thank God!”
She did not see his face, but she felt the tremor that passed through
the frame of the man who held her.
Downstairs, the study was blue with smoke. Dick Gordon, conspicuously
bandaged about the head, something of his good looks spoiled by three
latitudinal scratches which ran down his face, sat in his dressing-gown
and slippers, a big pipe clenched between his teeth, the picture of
battered contentment.
“Very good of you, Johnson,” he said. “I wonder whether Bennett will
take your offer. Honestly, do you think he’s competent to act as the
manager of this enormous business?”
Johnson looked dubious.
“He was a clerk at Maitlands. You can have no knowledge of his
administrative qualities. Aren’t you being just a little too generous?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I am,” said Johnson quietly. “I naturally want to
help. There may be other positions less important, and perhaps, as you
say, Ray might not care to take any quite as responsible.”
“I’m sure he won’t,” said Dick decidedly.
“It seems to me,” said Elk, “that the biggest job of all is to get young
Bennett out of the clutches of the Frogs. Once a Frog, always a Frog,
and this old man is not going to sit down and take his beating like a
little gentleman. We had a proof of that yesterday morning. They shot at
Johnson in this very street.”
Dick took out his pipe, sent a cloud of blue smoke toward the haze that
lay on the room.
“The Frog is finished,” he said. “The only question now is, what is the
best and most effective way to make an end? Balder is caught; Hagn is in
gaol; Lew Brady, who was one of their most helpful agents, though he did
not hold any executive position—Lew is dead; Lola——”
“Lola is through.” It was the American who spoke. “She left this morning
for the United States, and I took the liberty of facilitating her
passage—there remains Frog himself, and the organization which Frog
controls. Catch him, and you’ve finished with the gang.”
John Bennett came back at that moment, and the conversation took another
turn; soon after, Joshua Broad and Johnson went away together.
“You have not told Ella anything, Mr. Bennett?”
“About myself?—no. Is it necessary?”
“I hope you will not think so,” said Dick quietly. “Let that remain your
own secret, and Ray’s secret. It has been known to me for a very long
time. The day Elk told me he had seen you coming from King’s Cross
station, and that a burglary had been committed, I saw in the newspapers
that a man had been executed in York Prison. And then I took the trouble
to look up the files of the newspapers, and I found that your absences
had certainly coincided with burglaries—and there are so many
burglaries in England in the course of a year that it would have been
remarkable if they had not coincided—there were also other
coincidences. On the day the murder was committed at Ibbley Copse, you
were in Gloucester, and on that day Waldsen, the Hereford murderer, was
executed.”
John Bennett hung his head.
“You knew, and yet . . .” he hesitated.
Dick nodded.
“I knew none of the circumstances which drove you to this dreadful
business, Mr. Bennett,” he said gently. “To me you are an officer of the
law—no more and no less terrible than I, who have helped send many men
to the scaffold. No more unclean than the judge who sentences them and
signs the warrant for their death. We are instruments of Order.”
Ella and her father stayed that night at Harley Terrace, and in the
morning drove down to Paddington Station to meet the boy. Neither Dick
nor Elk accompanied them.
“There are two things which strike me as remarkable,” said Elk. “One is,
that neither you nor I recognized Bennett.”
“Why should we?” asked Dick. “Neither you nor I attend executions, and
the identity of the hangman has always been more or less unknown except
to a very few people. If he cares to advertise himself, he is known.
Bennett shrank from publicity, avoided even the stations of the towns
where the executions took place, and usually alighted at some wayside
village and tramped into the town on foot. The chief warder at
Gloucester told me that he never arrived at the gaol until midnight
before an execution. Nobody saw him come or go.”
“Old man Maitland must have recognized him.”
“He did,” nodded Dick. “At some period Maitland was in gaol, and it is
possible for prisoners, especially privileged prisoners, to catch a
glimpse of the hangman. By ‘privileged prisoners’ I mean men who, by
reason of their good conduct, were allowed to move about the gaol
freely. Maitland told Miss Bennett that he had been in ‘quod,’ and I am
certain that that is the true explanation. All Bennett’s official
letters came to him at Dorking, where he rented a room for years. His
mysterious journeys to town were not mysterious to the people of
Dorking, who did not know him by sight or name.”
To Elk’s surprise, when he came back to Harley Terrace, Dick was not
there. His servant said that his master had had a short sleep, had
dressed and gone out, and had left no message as to where he was going.
Dick did not, as a rule, go out on these solitary expeditions, and Elk’s
first thought was that he had gone to Horsham. He ate his dinner, and
thought longingly of his comfortable bed. He did not wish to retire for
the night until he had seen his chief.
He made himself comfortable in the study, and was fast asleep, when
somebody shook him gently by the shoulder. He looked up and saw Dick.
“Hullo!” he said sleepily. “Are you staying up all night?”
“I’ve got the car at the door,” said Dick. “Get your top-coat. We’re
going to Horsham.”
Elk yawned at the clock.
“She’ll be thinking of bed,” he protested.
“I hope so,” said Dick, “but I have my fears. Frog was seen on the
Horsham Road at nine o’clock to-night.”
“How do you know?” asked Elk, now wide awake.
“I’ve been shadowing him all the evening,” said Dick, “but he slipped
me.”
“You’ve been watching Frog?” repeated Elk slowly. “Do you know him?”
“I’ve known him for the greater part of a month,” said Dick Gordon. “Get
your gun!”