The Fellowship of the Frog Read Online

But it was for you—"

    He stopped abruptly at the sight of Gordon's embarrassment.

    "I invited you to dinner, and I'm pulling out the family skeleton," he said with rough good-humour.

    He took Dick's arm and led him down the garden path between the serried ranks of rose bushes.

    "I don't know why I asked you to stay, young man," he said. "An impulse, I suppose…maybe a bad conscience. I don't give these young people all the company they ought to have at home, and I'm not much of a companion for them. It's too bad that you should be the witness of the first family jar we've had for years."

    His voice and manner were those of an educated man. Dick wondered what occupation he followed, and why it should be so particularly obnoxious that he should be seeking some escape.

    The girl was quiet throughout the meal. She sat at Dick's left hand and she spoke very seldom. Stealing an occasional glance at her, he thought she looked preoccupied and troubled, and blamed his presence as the cause.

    Apparently no servant was kept at the cottage. She did the waiting herself, and she had replaced the plates when the old man asked:

    "I shouldn't think you were as young as you look, Mr. Gordon—what do you do for a living?"

    "I'm quite old," smiled Dick. "Thirty-one."

    "Thirty-one?" gasped Ella, going red. "And I've been talking to you as though you were a child!"

    "Think of me as a child at heart," he said gravely. "As to my occupation—I'm a persecutor of thieves and murderers and bad characters generally. My name is Richard Gordon—"

    The knife fell with a clatter from John Bennett's hand and his face went white.

    "Gordon—Richard Gordon?" he said hollowly.

    For a second their eyes met, the clear blue and the faded blue.

    "Yes—I am the Assistant Director of Prosecutions," said Gordon quietly. "And I have an idea that you and I have met before."

    The pale eyes did not waver. John Bennett's face was a mask.

    "Not professionally, I hope," he said, and there was a challenge in his voice.

    Dick laughed again as at the absurdity of the question. "Not professionally," he said with mock gravity.

    On his way back to London that night his memory worked overtime, but he failed to place John Bennett of Horsham.

    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, patriarchal in appearance, sparing of speech. He had arrived in London unheralded, and had arrived, in the less accurate sense of the word, before London was aware of his existence.

    Dick Gordon saw the speculator for the first time as he was waiting in the marble-walled vestibule. A man of middle height, bearded to his waist; his eyes almost hidden under heavy white brows; stout and laborious of gait, he came slowly through the outer office, where a score of clerks sat working under their green-shaded lamps, and, looking neither to the right nor left, walked into the elevator and was lost to view.

    "That is the old man: have you seen him before?" asked Ray Bennett, who had come out to meet the caller a second before. "He's a venerable old cuss, but as tight as a soundproof door. You couldn't pry money from him, not if you used dynamite! He pays Philo a salary that the average secretary wouldn't look at, and if Philo wasn't such an easygoing devil, he'd have left years ago."

    Dick Gordon was feeling a little uncomfortable. His presence at Maitlands was freakish, his excuse for calling as feeble as any weak brain could conceive. If he had spoken the truth to the flattered young man on whom he called in business hours, he would have said: "I have idiotically fallen in love with your sister. I am not especially interested in you, but I regard you as a line that will lead me to another meeting, therefore I have made my being in the neighbourhood an excuse for calling. And because of this insane love I have for your sister, I am willing to meet even Philo, who will surely bore me." Instead he said:

    "You are a friend of Philo—why do you call him that?"

    "Because he's a philosophical old horse—his other name is Philip," said the other with a twinkle in his eye. "Everybody is a friend of Philo's—he's the kind of man that makes friendship easy."

    The elevator door opened at that moment and a man came out. Instinctively Dick Gordon knew that this bald and middle-aged man with the good-humoured face was the subject of their discussion. His round, fat face creased in a smile as he recognized Ray, and after he had handed a bundle of documents to one of the clerks, he came over to where they were standing.

    "Meet Mr. Gordon," said Ray. "This is my friend Johnson." Philo grasped the extended hand warmly.