Read Online Elk 01 The Fellowship of the Frog by Edgar Wallace - Free Book Online

white brows. A few stray hairs of his spotless beard rested on the desk, and as he raised his hand to sweep them into place, she saw he wore fingerless woollen gloves. His head was completely bald…she looked at his big ears, standing away from his head, fascinated. Patriarchal, yet repulsive. There was something gross, obscene, about him that hurt her. It was not the untidiness of his dress, it was not his years. Age brings refinement, that beauty of decay that the purists call caducity. This old man had grown old coarsely.
    His scrutiny lacked the assurance she expected. It almost seemed that he was nervous, ill at ease. His gaze shifted from the girl to his secretary, and then to the rich colouring of the windows, and then furtively back to Ella again.
    “This is Miss Bennett, sir. You remember that Bennett is our exchange clerk, and a very smart fellow indeed. Miss Bennett wants you to reconsider your decision about that salary cut.”
    “You see, Mr. Maitland,” Ella broke in, “we’re not particularly well off, and the reduction makes a whole lot of difference to us.”
    Mr. Maitland wagged his bald head impatiently.
    “I don’t care whether you’re well off or not well off,” he said loudly. “When I reduces salaries I reduces ‘um, see?”
    She stared at him in amazement. The voice was harsh and common. The language and tone were of the gutter. In that sentence he confirmed all her first impressions.
    “If he don’t like it he can go, and if you don’t like it”—he fixed his dull eyes on the uncomfortable-looking Johnson—“you can go too. There’s lots of fellers I can get—pick ‘um up on the streets! Millions of ‘um! That’s all.” Johnson tiptoed from the presence and closed the door behind her.
    “He’s a horror!” she gasped. “How can you endure contact with him, Mr. Johnson?”
    The stout man smiled quietly.
    “‘Millions of ‘um,’” he repeated, “and he’s right. With a million and a half unemployed on the streets, I can’t throw up a good job—”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, impulsively putting her hand on his arm. “I didn’t know he was like that,” she went on more mildly. “He’s—terrible!”
    “He’s a self-made man, and perhaps he would have been well advised to have got an artisan to do the job,” smiled Johnson, “but he’s not really bad. I wonder why he saw you?”
    “Doesn’t he see people?”
    He shook his head.
    “Not unless it is absolutely necessary, and that only happens about twice a year. I don’t think there is anybody in this building that he’s ever spoken to—not even the managers.”
    He took her down to the general office. Ray had not come back.
    “The truth is,” confessed Johnson when she asked him, “that Ray hasn’t been to the office this morning. He sent word to say that he wasn’t feeling any too good, and I fixed it so that he has a day off.”
    “He’s not ill?” she asked in alarm, but Johnson reassured her.
    “No. I got on the telephone to him—he has a telephone at his new flat.”
    “I thought he had an ordinary apartment!” she said, aghast, the housewife in her perturbed. “A flat—where is it?”
    “In Knightsbridge,” replied Johnson quietly. “Yes, it sounds expensive, but I believe he has a bargain. A man who was going abroad sub-let it to him for a song. I suppose he wrote to you from the lodgings in Bloomsbury where he intended going. May I be candid, Miss Bennett?”
    “If it is about Ray, I wish you would,” she answered quickly.
    “Ray is rather worrying me,” said Johnson. “Naturally I want to do all that I can for him, for I am fond of him. At present my job is covering up his rather frequent absences from the office—you need not mention this fact to him—but it is rather a strain, for the old man has an uncanny instinct for a shirker. He is living in better style than he ought to be able to afford, and I’ve seen him dressed to kill with some of the swellest people in