The Fellowship of the Frog

By Edgar Wallace and Otto Penzler

An elusive gang leader and his minions frighten London and frustrate Scotland Yard in this classic crime thriller.

The secret organization whose members were known only as “the Frogs” was the subject of rumors and jokes—until serious crimes began to occur, one after another. The perpetrators, once caught, were found to bear tattooed frogs on their wrists and kept their mouths firmly shut, and the populace grew terrified of them.

The police were frustrated by their fruitless efforts to track down the leader of this strange gang. Then an officer who was working undercover and had finally managed to come face-to-face with the frightening figure was killed.

Now it’s time for Detective Sergeant Elk of Scotland Yard to get involved. Fortunately, despite his shabby clothes, glum demeanor, and utter inability to get himself promoted, he’s a sharper sleuth than he appears to be . . .

From Edgar Wallace, an enormously popular figure in early twentieth-century crime fiction, this is an intriguing tale of a nameless threat and a cop determined to track him down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Jan 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781504000857

Edgar Wallace

Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was a London-born writer who rose to prominence during the early twentieth century. With a background in journalism, he excelled at crime fiction with a series of detective thrillers following characters J.G. Reeder and Detective Sgt. (Inspector) Elk. Wallace is known for his extensive literary work, which has been adapted across multiple mediums, including over 160 films. His most notable contribution to cinema was the novelization and early screenplay for 1933’s King Kong.

Book preview

The Fellowship of the Frog

Edgar Wallace

CONTENTS

Foreword: The Frogs

Chapter I. At Maytree Cottage

Chapter II. A Talk About Frogs

Chapter III. The Frog

Chapter IV. Elk

Chapter V. Mr. Maitland Goes Home.

Chapter VI. Mr. Maitland Goes Shopping

Chapter VII. A Call On Mr. Maitland

Chapter VIII. The Offensive Ray

Chapter IX. The Man Who Was Wrecked

Chapter X. On Harley Terrace

Chapter XI. Mr. Broad Explains

Chapter XII. The Embellishment Of Mr. Maitland

Chapter XIII. A Raid On Eldor Street

Chapter XIV. All Bulls Hear!

Chapter XV. Tee Morning After

Chapter XVI. Ray Learns The Truth

Chapter XVII. The Coming Of Mills

Chapter XVIII. The Broadcast

Chapter XIX. In Elsham Wood

Chapter XX. Hagn

Chapter XXI. Mr. Johnson’s Visitor

Chapter XXII. The Inquiry

Chapter XXIII. A Meeting

Chapter XXIV. Why Maitland Came

Chapter XXV. In Regard To Saul Morris

Chapter XXVI. Promotion For Balder

Chapter XXVII. Mr. Broad Is Interesting

Chapter XXVIII. Murder

Chapter XXIX. The Footman

Chapter XXX. The Tramps

Chapter XXXI. The Chemical Corporation

Chapter XXXII. In Gloucester Prison

Chapter XXXIII. The Frog Of The Night

Chapter XXXIV. The Photo-Play

Chapter XXXV. Getting Through

Chapter XXXVI. The Power Cable

Chapter XXXVII. The Get-Away

Chapter XXXVIII. The Mystery Man

Chapter XXXIX. The Awakening

Chapter XL. Frog

Chapter XLI. In Quarry House

Chapter XLII. Joshua Broad Explains

Gallery of Film Images

INTRODUCTION

Edgar (Richard Horatio) Wallace (1875–1932) was an English novelist, prolific short story writer, dramatist, journalist—and probably the most popular thriller writer of all time.

Born in Greenwich, the illegitimate son of actress Marie (Polly) Richards and actor Richard Horatio Edgar Marriott (who appeared on the birth records as Walter Wallace), he was adopted by George Freeman at the age of nine days and raised as Dick Freeman, one of the eleven children of a fish porter. He learned the truth about his parentage when he was eleven years old and needed birth papers for a job. A year later his formal education ended, and he held a series of odd jobs until he joined the Royal West Kent Regiment at eighteen, later transferring to the Medical Staff Corps. Sent to South Africa, he wrote war poems (later collected in The Mission That Failed, 1898, and other volumes) and served as a correspondent during the Boer War for Reuters, as well as South African and London-based newspapers. In 1900 he returned to England and the following year married Ivy Caldecott; they were divorced in 1918, after having four children—Eleanor (who died as a child), Bryan, who was also a writer, Patricia, and Michael. Wallace married Jim, his secretary, in 1921; they had one daughter, Penelope.

Since publishers lacked faith in his work, Wallace founded the Tallis Press and published The Four Just Men, his first mystery and best-known work, in 1905. A vast advertising campaign and a unique publicity gimmick—a £500 reward to any reader who could guess how the murder of the British Foreign Secretary was committed—resulted in enormous sales and great financial losses, for there were several correct solutions and everyone had to be paid. In this tale, four wealthy dilettantes (actually three, since one dies before the series begins) find pleasure in administering justice when the law is unable, or unwilling, to do so. Wallace wrote several sequels to The Four Just Men: The Council of Justice (1908); The Just Men of Cordova (1917); The Law of the Four Just Men (1921; US title: Again the Three Just Men, 1933); The Three Just Men (1925); and Again the Three Just Men (1928; US title: The Law of the Three Just Men, 1931).

By 1920 Wallace was writing at a prodigious pace, ultimately producing 173 books (more than half involving crime and mystery) and seventeen plays. He once dictated an entire novel during a single weekend; on another occasion he plotted six books simultaneously; and he dictated serials at such a furious pace that he never knew what would happen in the ensuing chapters. His output was matched by his popularity. It has often been stated that in the 1920s and 1930s, one of every four books read in England was written by Wallace, the King of Thrillers.

This immense popularity earned Wallace a fortune. During the last decade of his life, he earned the equivalent of a quarter of a million dollars a year—and yet, because of his extravagant lifestyle, he left enormous debts when he died. He often lost $500 or more a day at the racetrack, but his lack of success at picking horses did not diminish his enthusiasm for the sport. He was a longtime racing editor for newspapers and wrote several books with racing themes and backgrounds. Motion pictures and television programs based on Wallace’s stories are everywhere.

As might be expected of such prolificacy, much of the writing is slapdash and cliché ridden, characterization is two-dimensional, and situations are frequently trite, relying on intuition, coincidence, and much pointless, confusing movement to convey a sense of action. The heroes and villains are clearly labeled, and the stock characters—humorous servants, baffled policemen, breathless heroines—could be interchanged from one book to another. The dialogue is convincing, however, with strong elements of comedy at appropriate times, as well as effectively created suspense.

One of the best—and rarest—Wallace books is The Tomb of Ts’in (1916), actually little more than a revised version of his Captain Tatham of Tatham Island (1909), which was slightly revised in a different way for another publisher in 1916 and issued as The Island of Galloping Gold. The main character of The Man Who Bought London (1915), Kerry King, is an American millionaire who plans a revolution and forms a gigantic syndicate to buy houses and shops in London as part of his scheme. The Green Archer (1923) is a famous story about a man found murdered after having quarreled with the owner of a haunted castle. The ghost is the Green Archer, and the corpse has a long green arrow in his chest. In The Crimson Circle (1922) Derrick Yale, the amazing psychometrical detective, is pitted against Scotland Yard.

Other popular Wallace characters include Sanders, the commissioner who maintains law and order for the crown in South Africa, assisted by his drawling lieutenant, Bones (Sanders of the River, 1911, and others); Oliver Rater, a silent Scotland Yard detective (The Orator, 1928); Surefoot Smith, a CID man who hates science and loves beer, and has to deal with an eccentric millionaire in The Clue of the Silver Key (1930; US title: The Silver Key); James Mortlake, the Black, a member of US Intelligence who wears black clothing and a black mask (The Man from Morocco, 1926; US title: The Black); Arthur Milton, the Ringer, an underworld character who, like the Four Just Men, always gets his man (The Gaunt Stranger, 1925; US title: The Ringer, 1926); financier Tony Braid, known as the Twister because he has only one method for extricating himself from difficulties—telling the truth (The Twister, 1928); a pretty female crook who steals from people with bloated bank accounts (Four Square Jane, 1929; a shady character called the Squealer, who is in on every major jewel robbery in London—if the thief will not split with him, he tells the police where the culprit can be found (The Squeaker, 1927; US title: The Squealer); and the benign Mr. J.G. Reeder.

Films

Literally hundreds of screen melodramas have been fashioned from Wallace material. The highlights are below; the first three are American silent serials.

The Green Archer. Pathé serial, 1925. Allene Ray, Walter Miller. Directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet. From the 1923 novel. A mysterious costumed archer lurks on the grounds of Bellamy Castle, helping a reporter expose the secrets of its reclusive millionaire owner.

The Mark of the Frog. Pathé serial, 1928. Donald Reed, Margaret Morris, Frank Lackteen. Directed by Arch Heath. Based on The Fellowship of the Frog (1925). In search of a vanished treasure, a criminal ring headed by the hooded Frog terrorizes New York.

The Terrible People.Pathé serial, 1928. Ray, Miller. Directed by Bennet. From the 1926 novel.An heiress is imperiled by the gang of a criminal who seems to have returned from the dead.

The Terror. Warner Brothers, 1928. Louise Fazenda, May McAvoy, Edward Everett Horton, John Miljan. Directed by Roy Del Ruth. Warner Brothers’ second all-talking feature, the film was based on Wallace’s play of 1927. A Scotland Yard operative goes to an old house while searching for a murderer who mutilates his victims.

The Ringer. British Lion, 1928. Leslie Faber, Annette Benson, Lawson Butt. Directed by Arthur Maude. Screenplay by Wallace, from his play, which began a successful London run in 1926 and became the most frequently filmed Wallace work. A criminal skilled in disguises eliminates his enemies despite heavy police surveillance.

The Flying Squad.British Lion, 1929. Wyndham Standing, Dorothy Bartlam, Bryan Edgar Wallace, and Carol Reed (in bit roles as petty crooks). Directed by Maude. From the 1928 novel. London’s motorized police breaks up a criminal gang.

The Clue of the New Pin. British Lion, 1929. Benita Hume, Kim Peacock, Donald Calthrop, John Gielgud. Directed by Maude. From the 1923 novel. A rich recluse is murdered in an absolutely sealed room.

The Squeaker. British Lion, 1930. Percy Marmont, Anne Grey, Gordon Harker. Screenplay and direction by Wallace.The first all-talking British Wallace film, based on the 1927 novel. London’s jewelry thieves are at the mercy of a superfence (actually the head of a benevolent society).

The Menace. Columbia, 1932. H.B. Warner, Bette Davis, Walter Byron. Directed by Roy William Neill. Based on The Feathered Serpent (1927). A man sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his father is certain that his stepmother is actually guilty.

The Frightened Lady.British Lion, 1932. Norman McKinnel, Cathleen Nesbitt, Emlyn Williams. Directed by T. Hayes Hunter. Wallace also used this material in his play The Case of the Frightened Lady (1933; US title: Criminal at Large). A titled widow nervously consults the police, fearing that someone in her secret-passage-filled manor, Mark’s Priory, is trying to strangle the fiancée of her mad young son (Williams).

King Kong. RKO, 1933.Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, Robert Armstrong. Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper. Wallace died in Hollywood while working on the original screenplay of this adventure epic.

Before Dawn.RKO, 1933. Stuart Erwin, Dorothy Wilson, Warner Oland. Directed by Irving Pichel. Based on Wallace’s short story Death Watch. A female spiritualist, in a trance, tries to find the treasure hidden in a supposedly haunted house.

Mystery Liner. Monogram, 1934.Noah Beery, Astrid Allwyn, Gustav von Seyffertitz. Directed by Neill. Based on Wallace’s story The Ghost of John Holling. Murders take place on a liner at sea, while an inventor on board experiments with wireless control of ships.

The Return of the Terror.First National, 1934. Mary Astor, Lyle Talbot, John Halliday. Directed by Howard Bretherton. Loosely based on The Terror, the 1927 play. A man accused of murdering three patients returns to an eerie sanatorium one stormy night.

Sanders of the River.London Film, 1935. Leslie Banks, Paul Robeson. Directed by Zoltan Korda. Based on the 1911 novel. Wallace’s tribute to British colonialism centers on efforts to keep peace among savage African tribes.

The Crimson Circle.Wainwright (British), 1936. Hugh Wakefield, Alfred Drayton, Beery, June Duprez, Niall MacGinnis. Directed by Reginald Denham. Based on the 1922 novel (there was also a 1922 silent film). The victims of a mysterious blackmail gang—and members of the gang itself—are found dead, marked with a red circle.

The Girl from Scotland Yard.Paramount, 1937. Karen Morley, Robert Baldwin, Eduardo Ciannelli. Directed by Robert Vignola. From The Square Emerald (1926; US title: The Girl from Scotland Yard). The heroine pursues the mad creator of a death ray.

The Squeaker (US title: Murder on Diamond Row). London Film, 1937. Edmund Lowe, Ann Todd, Sebastian Shaw, Robert Newton, Alastair Sim. Directed by William K. Howard. Based on the 1927 novel. Again, London’s fences are imperiled.

The Four Just Men (US title: The Secret Four). Ealing (British), 1939. Hugh Sinclair, Griffith Jones, Francis L. Sullivan, Frank Lawton, Anna Lee, Basil Sydney, Alan Napier. Directed by Walter Forde. Based on the 1905 novel; previously filmed as a British silent film in 1921. An actor, a producer, a costume designer, and a millionaire join forces to dispense justice privately; they eliminate a traitorous member of Parliament.

Dark Eyes of London (US title: The Human Monster). Argyle (British), 1939.Béla Lugosi, Hugh Williams, Greta Gynt. Directed by Walter Summers. Based on the 1924 novel. Scotland Yard probes the link between the kindly, gray-haired director of a workhouse for blind men and a shady insurance broker.

The Green Archer.Columbia serial, 1940. Victor Jory, Irish Meredith, James Craven. Directed by James W. Horne. Based on the 1923 novel. Criminals again occupy Bellamy Castle while the masked archer casts his shadow against the walls.

The Door with Seven Locks (US title: Chamber of Horrors). Pathé (British), 1940. Banks, Lilli Palmer. Directed by Norman Lee. Based on the 1926 novel. Weekend guests at a country house become involved in an attempt to steal a jewel inheritance.

The Case of the Frightened Lady (US title: The Frightened Lady). Pennant (British), 1940. Marius Goring, Penelope Dudley Ward, Helen Haye. Directed by George King. Based on The Frightened Lady (1933 US title: The Case of the Frightened Lady). Neurotic young Lord Lebanon (Goring) is heard playing the piano wildly as stranglings occur at Mark’s Priory.

During the war decade, Wallace received less attention, and there was only one important adaptation during the 1950s.

The Ringer. London, 1952. Herbert Lom, Donald Wolfit, Mai Zetterling, Gynt. Directed by Guy Hamilton. The Ringer, a master of disguises, will not allow a police cordon to keep him from his vengeance.

In 1959, Germany began a series of Wallace adaptations that became that nation’s most popular screen entertainment; in fact, for more than a decade, there was a Wallace mania. The films are all similar and familiar—a stock reservoir of players, sets, and even plot elements only slightly rearranged in an endless succession of films. Initially, they remained close to the novels from which they were drawn (including the most faithful Green Archer ever filmed, in 1961), but the scenarios soon became heavy and distorted; after almost one hundred films, the Wallace inspiration is difficult to detect. Berlin’s Rialto produced these films, which were mostly directed by Alfred Vohrer and Harald Reinl (who also specialized in the Dr. Mabuse series of the same period). Joachim Fuchsberger is a recurring hero (often as Scotland Yard’s Inspector Higgins, with Siegfried Schuerenberg as his superior, Sir John), and he is frequently photographed in actual London locations. Klaus Kinski is the perennial neurotic suspect-victim-comedy foil.

Among the very best German films are The Fellowship of the Frog (1959), in which Graham Greene’s Harry Lime plays a role, though only off camera. The Terrible People (1960), a somewhat altered version in which the executed criminal returns but the original ending is changed; The Forger of London (1961), in which a young aristocrat fears that during a period of amnesia, he may have become a counterfeiter; the brooding Inn on the River (1962), in which a harpoon is the weapon of choice in several murders alongside the Thames; Curse of the Yellow Snake (1963), Wallace’s tribute to Fu-Manchu (see Fu-Manchu, Dr.); The Indian Scarf (1963), a wild mix of The Frightened Lady (the title refers to the strangler’s tool) and an and-then-there-were-none theme; and The Black Abbot (1963), with its eerie castle setting. The Wallace film craze continued with only slightly lessened vigor into the 1970s, with such bloodcurdling titles as The Mad Executioners, The Phantom of Soho, and The College Girl Murders; a voice identifying itself as Wallace chuckles sinisterly under the credits of such films as The Hand of Power.

In the meantime, England experienced a Wallace film resurrection of almost equal magnitude. In 1960 Jack Greenwood began producing a series of short screen adaptations, all slightly more than an hour in length, for secondary theatrical release, and ultimately for British and American television use, under the umbrella title The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theater, Anglo-Amalgamated (British). A bust of the author revolved sinisterly in smoke under the credits. In more than forty films (a few of which were actually the unacknowledged work of other writers, including George Baxt, the compact scenarios sometimes overcondensed Wallace’s complex stories, but often his characteristic twists and surprises survived the constriction. Some of the highlights of the series are listed below.

Clue of the Twisted Candle. 1960. Bernard Lee (the first of several appearances as Superintendant Meredith of Scotland Yard), David Knight. Directed by Allan Davis. Based on the 1918 novel. In a room locked from the inside, a millionaire is found murdered; near him are two half-burned candles.

The Malpas Mystery. 1960. Maureen Swanson, Allan Cuthbertson, Geoffrey Keen, Ronald Howard. Directed by Sidney Hayers. Based on The Face in the Night (1924). A girl, a former convict, and now secretary to a strange recluse, learns that she is heir to the fortune of her long-lost father, who is searching for her.

The Man Who Was Nobody.1961. Hazel Court, John Crawford, Lisa Daniely. Directed by Montgomery Tully. Based on the 1927 novel. A female private detective’s search for a missing playboy leads her to the mysterious South Africa Smith.

Clue of the New Pin. 1961. Paul Daneman, Bernard Archard. Directed by Davis. Based on the 1923 novel. A millionaire is found killed in a locked room, the key to the door on a table nearby.

The Fourth Square. 1961. Conrad Phillips, Natasha Parry, Delphi Lawrence, Daneman. Directed by Davis. From Four Square Jane (1928). Three valuable jewels are stolen from three London squares, with murder thrown in.

The Man at the Carlton Tower. 1961. Maxine Audley, Lee Montague. Directed by Robert Tronson. From The Man at the Carlton (1931), with the title altered so that scenes could be filmed at the newly constructed Carlton Tower Hotel. When the chief suspect in a jewelry theft vanishes, his partner and the police search for him.

The Clue of the Silver Key. 1961. Lee, Lyndon Brook, Bernard Lee. Directed by Gerard Glaister. From the 1930 novel. In another impossible crime, a bad-tempered, blind moneylender is found shot to death.

The Share Out. 1962. Lee (Meredith), Alexander Knox, Moira Redmond. Directed by Glaister. From Jack O’Judgment (1920). A shady private investigator tries to clear his past by helping Scotland Yard close in on a large blackmail ring, many of whose members are suddenly murdered.

Number Six. 1962. Ivan Desny, Nadja Regin, Michael Goodliffe, Brian Bedford. Directed by Tronson. From the 1927 novel. Criminals try to ferret out the identity of Number 6, Scotland Yard’s secret agent.

Although the series continued for several more years, later installments paid less attention to Wallace’s originals works.

Television

In 1959 thirty-nine half-hour television programs were fashioned from The Four Just Men, featuring, in turn, the adventures of Dan Dailey, Jack Hawkins, Richard Conte, and Vittorio De Sica, who, as private citizens, correct injustices in various parts of the world.

Plays

Wallace was quite successful in contributing to England’s rich tradition of melodrama theater with such plays as The Ringers (1926) and The Terror (1927); as late as the 1950s, long after Wallace’s death, Princess Margaret and Elsa Maxwell participated in a society staging for charity of The Frog, which had been adapted from Wallace’s The Fellowship of the Frog (1925) by Ian Hay. Among Broadway productions, Wallace is best remembered for Criminal at Large (a version of the tale of the Priory stranglings that featured in The Frightened Lady of 1933) and On the Spot, a popular drama filmed as Dangerous to Know (1938). In this play, staged in London as well as on Broadway in 1930, a gangster czar (closely resembling Al Capone) living in a Chicago penthouse is ultimately done in by his wronged Chinese mistress (Anna May Wong). In typical fashion, Wallace wrote the play in four days. It made a star of Charles Laughton.

Otto Penzler

FOREWORD

THE FROGS

It was of interest to those who study the psychology of the mass that, until the prosperous but otherwise insignificant James G. Bliss became the object of their attention, the doings and growth of the Frogs were almost unnoticed. There were strong references in some of the country newspapers to the lawless character of the association; one Sunday journal had an amusing article headed:

TRAMPS’ TRADE UNION TAKES FROG FOR SYMBOL OF MYSTIC ORDER

It gave a humorous and quite fanciful extract from its rules and ritual. The average man made casual references: I say, have you seen this story about the tramps’ Union—every member a walking delegate? …

There was a more serious leading article on the growth of trade unionism, in which the Frogs were cited, and although from time to time came accounts of mysterious outrages which had been put to the discredit of the Frogs, the generality of citizens regarded the society, order, or whatever it was, as something benevolent in its intentions and necessarily eccentric in its constitution, and, believing this, were in their turn benevolently tolerant. In some such manner as the mass may learn with mild interest of a distant outbreak of epidemic disease, which slays its few, and wake one morning to find the sinister malady tapping at their front doors, so did the world become alive and alarmed at the terror-growth which suddenly loomed from the mists.

James G. Bliss was a hardware merchant, and a man well known on exchange, where he augmented the steady profits of the Bliss General Hardware Corporation with occasional windfalls from legitimate speculation. A somewhat pompous and, in argument, aggressive person, he had the advantage which mediocrity, blended with a certain expansive generosity, gives to a man, in that he had no enemies; and since his generosity was run on sane business principles, it could not even be said of him, as is so often said of others, that his worst enemy was himself. He held, and still holds, the bulk of the stock in the B.G.H. Corporation—a fact which should be noted because it was a practice of Mr. Bliss to manipulate from time to time the price of his shares by judicious operations. It was at a time coincident with the little boom in industrials which brought Bliss Hardware stock at a jump from 12.50 to 23.75, that the strange happening occurred which focussed for the moment all eyes upon the Frogs.

Mr. Bliss has a country place at Long Beach, Hampshire. It is referred to as The Hut, but is the sort of hut that King Solomon might have built for the Queen of Sheba, had that adventurous man been sufficiently well acquainted with modern plumbing, the newest systems of heating and lighting, and the exigent requirements of up-to-date chauffeurs. In these respects Mr. Bliss was wiser than Solomon.

He had returned to his country home after a strenuous day in the City, and was walking in the garden in the cool of the evening. He was (and is) married, but his wife and two daughters were spending the spring in Paris—a wise course, since the spring is the only season when Paris has the slightest pretensions to being a beautiful city.

He had come from his kennels, and was seen walking across the home park toward a covert which bordered his property. Hearing a scream, his kennel man and a groom ran toward the wood, to discover Bliss lying on the ground unconscious, his face and shoulders covered with blood. He had been struck down by some heavy weapon: there were a slight fracture of the parietal bone and several very ugly scalp wounds.

For three weeks this unfortunate man hovered between life and death, unconscious except at intervals, and unable during his lucid moments to throw any light on, or make any coherent statement concerning, the assault, except to murmur, Frog … frog … left arm … frog.

It was the first of many similar outrages, seemingly purposeless and wanton, in no case to be connected with robbery, and invariably (except once) committed upon people who occupied fairly unimportant positions in the social hierarchy. The Frogs advanced instantly to a first-class topic. The disease was found to be widespread, and men who had read, light-heartedly, of minor victimizations, began to bolt their own doors and carry lethal weapons when they went abroad at nights.

And they were wise, for there was a force in being that had been born in fear and had matured in obscurity (to the wonder of its creator) so that it wielded the tyrannical power of governments.

In the centre of many ramifications sat the Frog, drunk with authority, merciless, terrible. One who lived two lives and took full pleasure from both, and all the time nursing the terror that Saul Morris had inspired one foggy night in London, when the grimy streets were filled with armed policemen looking for the man who cleaned the strong-room of the S.S. Mantania of three million pounds between the port of Southampton and the port of Cherbourg.

I.

AT MAYTREE COTTAGE

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 front and a thatched roof. Standing at the gate, Richard Gordon stopped to admire. The house dated back to the days of Elizabeth, but his interest and admiration were not those of the antiquary.

Nor, though he loved flowers, of the horticulturist, though the broad garden was a patchwork of colour and the fragrance of cabbage roses came to delight his senses. Nor was it the air of comfort and cleanliness that pervaded the place, the scrubbed red-brick pathway that led to the door, the spotless curtains behind leaded panes.

It was the girl, in the red-lined basket chair, that arrested his gaze. She sat on a little lawn in the shade of a mulberry tree, with her shapely young limbs stiffly extended, a book in her hand, a large box of chocolates by her side. Her hair, the colour of old gold, an old gold that held life and sheen; a flawless complexion, and, when she turned her head in his direction, a pair of grave, questioning eyes, deeper than grey, yet greyer than blue …

She drew up her feet hurriedly and rose.

I’m so sorry to disturb you,—Dick, hat in hand, smiled his apology—but I want water for my poor little Lizzie. She’s developed a prodigious thirst.

She frowned for a second, and then laughed.

Lizzie—you mean a car? If you’ll come to the back of the cottage I’ll show you where the well is.

He followed, wondering who she was. The tiny hint of patronage in her tone he understood. It was the tone of matured girlhood addressing a boy of her own age. Dick, who was thirty and looked eighteen, with his smooth, boyish face, had been greeted in that little boy tone before, and was inwardly amused.

Here is the bucket and that is the well, she pointed. I would send a maid to help you, only we haven’t a maid, and never had a maid, and I don’t think ever shall have a maid!

Then some maid has missed a very good job, said Dick, for this garden is delightful.

She neither agreed nor dissented. Perhaps she regretted the familiarity she had shown. She conveyed to him an impression of aloofness, as she watched the process of filling the buckets, and when he carried them to the car on the road outside, she followed.

I thought it was a—a—what did you call it—Lizzie?

She is Lizzie to me, said Dick stoutly as he filled the radiator of the big Rolls, and she will never be anything else. There are people who think she should be called ‘Diana,’ but those high-flown names never had any attraction for me. She is Liz—and will always be Liz.

She walked round the machine, examining it curiously.

Aren’t you afraid to be driving a big car like that? she asked. I should be scared to death. It is so tremendous and … and unmanageable.

Dick paused with a bucket in hand.

Fear, he boasted, is a word which I have expunged from the bright lexicon of my youth.

For a second puzzled, she began to laugh softly.

Did you come by way of Welford? she asked.

He nodded.

I wonder if you saw my father on the road?

I saw nobody on the road except a sour-looking gentleman of middle age who was breaking the Sabbath by carrying a large brown box on his back.

Where did you pass him? she asked, interested.

Two miles away—less than that. And then, a doubt intruding: I hope that I wasn’t describing your parent?

It sounds rather like him, she said without annoyance. Daddy is a naturalist photographer. He takes moving pictures of birds and things—he is an amateur, of course.

Of course, agreed Dick.

He brought the buckets back to where he had found them and lingered. Searching for an excuse, he found it in the garden. How far he might have exploited this subject is a matter for conjecture. Interruption came in the shape of a young man who emerged from the front door of the cottage. He was tall and athletic, good-looking … Dick put his age at twenty.

Hello, Ella! Father back? he began, and then saw the visitor.

This is my brother, said the girl, and Dick Gordon nodded. He was conscious that this free-and-easy method of getting acquainted was due largely, if not entirely, to his youthful appearance. To be treated as an inconsiderable boy had its advantages. And so it appeared.

I was telling him that boys ought not to be allowed to drive big cars, she said. You remember the awful smash there was at the Shoreham cross roads?

Ray Bennett chuckled.

This is all part of a conspiracy to keep me from getting a motor- bicycle. Father thinks I’ll kill somebody, and Ella thinks I’ll kill myself.

Perhaps there was something in Dick Gordon’s quick smile that warned the girl that she had been premature in her appraisement of his age, for suddenly, almost abruptly, she nodded an emphatic dismissal and turned away. Dick was at the gate when a further respite arrived. It was the man he had passed on the road. Tall, loose-framed, grey and gaunt of face, he regarded the stranger with suspicion in his deep-set eyes.

Good morning, he said curtly. Car broken down?

No, thank you. I ran out of water, and Miss—er—

Bennett, said the man. She gave you the water, eh? Well, good morning.

He stood aside to let Gordon pass, but Dick opened the