Free Elk 01 The Fellowship of the Frog by Edgar Wallace

Minister, “I am expecting from France the draft commercial treaty that is to be signed as between ourselves and the French and Italian Governments. It is very important that this document should be well guarded because—and I tell you this in confidence—it deals with a revision of tariff rates. I won’t compromise you by telling you in what manner the revisions are applied, but it is essential that the King’s Messenger who is bringing the treaty should be well guarded, and I wish to supplement the ordinary police protection by sending you to Dover to meet him. It is a little outside your duties, but your Intelligence work during the war must be my excuse for saddling you with this responsibility. Three members of the French and Italian secret police will accompany him to Dover, when you and your men will take on the guard duty, and remain until you personally see the document deposited in my own safe.”
    Like many other important duties, this proved to be wholly unexciting. The Messenger was picked up on the quay at Dover, shepherded into a Pullman coupe which had been reserved for him, and the passage-way outside the coupe was patrolled by two men from Scotland Yard. At Victoria a car, driven by a chauffeur-policeman and guarded by armed men, picked up the Messenger and Dick, and drove them to Calden Gardens. In his library the Foreign Secretary examined the seals carefully, and then, in the presence of Dick and the Detective-Inspector who had commanded the escort, placed the envelope in the safe.
    “I don’t suppose for one moment,” said the Foreign Minister with a smile, after all the visitors but Dick had departed, “that our friends the Frogs are greatly interested. Yet, curiously enough, I had them in my mind, and this was responsible for the extraordinary precautions we have taken. There is, I suppose, no further clue in the Genter murder?”
    “None, sir—so far as I know. Domestic crime isn’t really in my department. And any kind of crime does not come to the Public Prosecutor until the case against an accused person is ready to be presented.”
    “It is a pity,” said Lord Farmley. “I could wish that the matter of the Frogs was not entirely in the hands of Scotland Yard. It is so out of the ordinary, and such a menace to society, that I should feel more happy if some extra department were controlling the investigations.”
    Dick Gordon might have said that he was itching to assume that control, but he refrained. His lordship fingered his shaven chin thoughtfully. He was an austere man of sixty, delicately featured, as delicately wrinkled, the product of that subtle school of diplomacy which is at once urbane and ruthless, which slays with a bow, and is never quite so dangerous as when it is most polite.
    “I will speak to the Prime Minister,” he said. “Will you dine with me, Captain Gordon?”
    Early in the next afternoon, Dick Gordon was summoned to Downing Street, and was informed that a special department had been created to deal exclusively with this social menace.
    “You have carte blanche, Captain Gordon. I may be criticized for giving you this appointment, but I am perfectly satisfied that I have the right man,” said the Prime Minister; “and you may employ any officer from Scotland Yard you wish.”
    “I’ll take Sergeant Elk,” said Dick promptly, and the Prime Minister looked dubious.
    “That is not a very high rank,” he demurred.
    “He is a man with thirty years’ service,” said Dick; “and I believe that only his failure in the educational test has stopped his further promotion. Let me have him, sir, and give him the temporary rank of Inspector.”
    The older man laughed.
    “Have it your own way,” he said.
    Sergeant Elk, lounging in to report progress that afternoon, was greeted by a new title. For a while he was dazed, and then a slow smile dawned on his homely face.
    “I’ll bet I’m the only inspector in England who doesn’t know where Queen Elizabeth is