The Fellowship of the Frog

A DRY radiator coincided with a burst tyre. The second coincidence was the proximity of Maytree Cottage on the Horsham Road. The cottage was larger than most, with a timbered fr...

MAITLANDS Consolidated had grown from one small office to its present palatial proportions in a comparatively short space of time. Maitland was a man advanced in years, patriarc...

IT was growing dark when the two tramps, skirting the village of Morby, came again to the post road. The circumvention of Morby had been a painful and tiring business, for the r...

THERE was no detective in the world who looked less like a police officer, and a clever police officer, than Elk. He was tall and thin, and a slight stoop accentuated his weedin...

THEY were nearing the imposing home of Maitlands Consolidated, when Mr. Johnson suddenly broke off in the middle of an interesting exposition of his philosophy and quickened his...

ELDOR STREET, Tottenham, was one of thousands of drab and ugly thoroughfares that make up the central suburbs of London. Imagine two rows of houses set on either side of a strai...

OUTWARDLY, John Bennett accepted his son’s new life as a very natural development which might be expected in a young man. Inwardly he was uneasy, fearful. Ray was his only son;...

IT was perfectly absurd, Dick told himself a dozen times during the days which followed, that a grown man of his experience should punctiliously and solemnly strike from the cal...

“There was a burglary committed at the residence of Lord Farmley on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Probably between midnight and three o’clock. The safe was blown and import...

“Captain Gordon wishes you to take the first taxi you can find and come to his house—the matter is very urgent,” said a voice. “I am speaking from Harley Terrace.”

DETAINED under police supervision, Mr. Broad did not seem in any way surprised or disconcerted. Dick Gordon and his assistant reached Wandsworth Common ten minutes after the new...

THERE was a concert that night at the Queen’s Hall, and the spacious auditorium was crowded to hear the summer recital of a great violinist. Dick Gordon, in the midst of an even...

JOHNSON did not come back, and in many respects the two men were glad. Elk had been on the point of telling the secretary to clear, and he hoped that Mr. Maitland would follow h...

“You’ve certainly a nose for trouble,” said Elk with respect; “and whilst you’re telling me how you came to know about this raid, which hadn’t been decided on until half-an-hour...

RAY BENNETT woke with a groan. His temples were splitting, his tongue was parched and dry. When he tried to lift his aching head from the pillow he groaned again, but with an ef...

“It is a new accomplishment,” said Dick with mock gravity. “A thirty-third degree Frog taught me. It’s the signal the old Grand Master Frog gives when he enters the presence of...

ON the morning that Elk waited for the arrival of the informer, elaborate precautions were being made to transfer the man to headquarters. All night the prison had been surround...

HIS jaundiced clerk was, as usual, in a complaining mood. “Records have been making a fuss and have been blaming me,” he said bitterly. “Records give themselves more airs than t...

DICK GORDON, in the sudden lightening of his heart which had come to him when he realized that his horrible fears were without foundation, was inclined to regard the night as ha...

They left half an hour later, and each man was so busy with his own thoughts that Dick did not speak until they were passing the villas where the body of Genter had been found....

THERE is a certain murky likeness between the houses in Fitzroy Square, London, and Gramercy Park, New York. Fitzroy Square belongs to the Georgian days, when Soho was a fashion...

HE intended making an early call at King’s Cross to examine the contents of the bag, but awoke the next morning, his mind filled with the coming inquiry to the exclusion of all...

HERON’S CLUB had been temporarily closed by order of the police, but now was allowed to open its doors again. Ray invariably lunched at Heron’s unless he was taking the meal wit...

ELLA BENNETT was cooking the dinner when her father came in, depositing his heavy camera on the floor of the sitting-room, but carrying, as was usual, his grip to the bedroom. S...

“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...

Elk apparently accepted failure as an inevitability, and seemed, even to his greatest admirer, to be hypnotized into a fatalistic acceptance of the situation. His attitude was a...

DICK GORDON ended his interview with Mr. Ezra Maitland at three o’clock in the morning, and went to Headquarters, to find the charge-room at Cannon Row singularly empty. When he...

THE stone which woke Ella Bennett was aimed with such force that the pane cracked. She slipped quickly from bed and pulled aside the curtains. There had been a thunderstorm in t...

“Both shot,” he said, and looked up at the filmy cloud under the ceiling. “May have happened any time—a quarter of an hour ago. This stuff hangs about for hours.”

LEW BRADY sat disconsolately in Lola Bassano’s pretty drawing-room, and a more incongruous figure in that delicate setting it was impossible to imagine. A week’s growth of beard...

ELK had promised to dine at Gordon’s club. Dick waited for him until twenty minutes past the hour of appointment, and Elk had neither telephoned nor put in an appearance. At twe...

THERE is a cell in Gloucester Prison; the end cell in a long corridor of the old building. Next door is another cell, which is never occupied, for an excellent reason. That in w...

“Don’t talk to me for a minute, Ella,” he said as she rose from her knees—she was weeding her own pet garden—“or I shall get these blamed things mixed. This one”—he shook his ri...

“Well, there’s a photograph coming along; it will be in London this afternoon; but I needn’t see that. This man under sentence has three vaccination marks on the right forearm.”

WHEN Elk came up to the Prosecutor’s room, Dick was sitting at the table, writing telegrams. They were each addressed to the Governor of Gloucester Prison, and contained a brief...

DICK GORDON knew that any discussion with his captors was a waste of breath, and that repartee was profitless. His head was aching, but no sooner was he left alone than he gave...

This view commended itself to most of the men present. Dick counted six voices. He struck a match for another survey, and again his eye fell upon the cable. And then an inspirat...

He did not say more, but something in his demeanour betrayed the truth. These were the clothes in which some man had been hanged, and yet Ray’s hands did not shake as he fixed t...

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...

THERE is a happiness which has no parallel in life—the happiness which comes when a dear one is restored. Ray Bennett sat by his father’s chair, and was content to absorb the lo...

THE first impression that Ella Bennett had when she returned to the kitchen to fasten the door that shut off the sitting-room, was that the tea-cloth, which she had hung up to d...

“My name, as you rightly surmised, Mr. Elk, is Saul Morris. I am, by all moral standards, a criminal, though I have not been guilty of any criminal practice for the past ten yea...