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.