‘In de case,’ said Garrotty, with understandable surprise for Dragoli was standing nearer to them.
‘Give me them.’
Garrotty, who for years had ruled one of the biggest rackets in New York City, had never known a man who could make him feel as scared as Dragoli did. He took out the papers, spreading them in front of the Egyptian. Dragoli went through them slowly, putting them all in a growing heap on the table. He did not speak until he had finished, and then his baleful eyes looked murderous.
‘You – helpless – fool,’ he said very softly. There’s nothing here – nothing at all!’
Garrotty gasped.
‘But – but de guy –’
Tricked you,’ sneered Dragoli. Told you what he wanted you to believe, and you let him do it. Do you know what these are, Garrotty?’
Garrotty’s tongue ran along his dry lips.
‘Say---’
‘They are maps and plans of the location of Ancient Egyptian burial grounds,’ said Dragoli. ‘Where you ought to be---’
‘Say listen---’
‘Oh, get out of my sight!’ snarled Dragoli.
Garrotty shrugged, but went to the door. He was half-way out when Dragoli called after him: ‘You’re sure you killed Colliss?’
‘Sure’as I’m here.’
‘All right,’ said Dragoli, and he took a cigarette from his case, lit it, and sat down in an easy chair. The chief thing he had wanted to do was to have Colliss dead. It would have been a big help had he been able to find papers showing what the man had discovered when he had been in Stamboul, but there was just a chance that he had committed them all to memory.
On the other hand, the fact that he had deceived Garrotty made it likely that the papers were in existence.
Dragoli smoked in silence for ten minutes, then put the cigarette out, and took a small rubber wallet from his pocket. It was filled with narrow slips of papers, like the contents of a Seidlitz-powder packet. He took one, opened it, and tossed it down his throat. Then he closed his eyes and a soft, dreamy smile curved his full lips.
At a quarter past nine Sir Ian Warrender had finished talking with Colliss. At half past nine Garrotty had fired those four shots at the special agent’s heart. And at twenty-five minutes past eleven Sir Ian’s car, driven by Detective-Sergeant Owen, turned into the small drive of ‘Homelea’, Colliss’s house.
There was no suggestion of trouble. Peace and silence reigned over the countryside, and Owen drank in the clean air, telling himself that the day off duty was going to be fully up to his expectations.
It was Warrender, glancing from the drive across the lawn, who saw the open french windows. He snapped an order at once.
‘Pull up, Owen!’
The sergeant pulled at the brakes. Both men glanced across the lawn, and Owen saw what Warrender had fancied at his first look. The french windows were smashed.
Warrender skipped out of the car with surprising agility for a man approaching sixty, and Owen had a job to keep pace with him. As they drew nearer they saw the broken glass lying outside the window and, through the smashed panels the sight of a man’s leg, the toe pointing towards the ceiling.
Warrender was pale.
‘They’ve been here,’ he muttered. ‘I hope to God we’re in time. Draw your gun, Owen.’
Detective-Sergeant Owen – who, because he was detailed to work on the Black Circle case, was carrying a .35 automatic, did as he was told. Cautiously they approached Colliss’s study, but no sound came. The sun, behind them, sent long shadows into the room as they stepped over the narrow gravel path. Then very softly came a voice, filled with uncertainty.
‘Who is there?’
It was a whisper and Warrender knew that it was nothing to be alarmed about. He called out quickly: ‘The police –’
‘Thank God for that! Come on.’
Owen went in first, conscious of the possibility that it was a trick, and that Warrender might be shot. He saw Colliss stretched out where Garrotty had left him for dead, bound hand and foot. Warrender followed, and swore.
‘Who –’
‘Get me free,’ gasped Colliss. ‘And whisky – over there.’
Owen cut the cords, and Warrender found and poured the whisky. Colliss took a deep swig, and then pushed his hand through his hair. Owen had made him lean against the table, and he was still sitting down. The blood on his hand and forehead had congealed into an unpleasant brown crust.
‘Gunmen,’ he muttered. ‘Masked, and I couldn’t recognize them. If it hadn’t been for your warnings, Sir Ian...’
Owen looked puzzled. Warrender was on his knees, undoing the wounded man’s waistcoat. To his astonishment, Owen saw something glitter beneath it, and a moment later recognized a mail-shirt. Round the heart were the marks of the four bullets, which had lodged in his clothing.
‘Find the servants,’ muttered Colliss, and Owen jumped for the door at a nod from Warrender. He left the door open, but Colliss spoke quickly.
‘It’s all right – they got nothing.’ He smiled faintly. ‘They thought they’d put the fear of God into me, and they damned nearly had. I didn’t dream it was as bad as this, Sir Ian.’
Warrender’s smile was tight-lipped.
‘Nor do a lot of people. I won’t take credit for suggesting the mail-shirt, though: Rollison told me it was essential and I even wear one myself.’ He was smiling wryly now, while the other man said: ‘Rollison?’
‘The Hon. Richard.’
Colliss frowned, wiping his hand across his forehead.
‘I know him, of course, but I thought –’
‘That he was just an ornament,’ smiled Warrender. ‘A great many people do. Have you ever heard rumours of a man named the Toff?’
‘I can’t say I have,’ admitted Colliss, making an effort to get up. ‘Why?’
‘That’s Rollison’s nickname in the East End; but you’ll have plenty of time to learn about it. If you’d been much in England lately you’d know Rollison all right. How’re you feeling?’
‘Stiff and sore,’ admitted Colliss. ‘I had to fox, though, and if he’d fired at my head ...’
He broke off with a grimace.
Before Warrender spoke again, he helped the man on to a couch, and telephoned the Winchester police. Meanwhile, Owen had found the servants, two of them still unconscious, but none of them badly hurt. Morley, the butler, had recovered from the shock quickly and proved an expert in first aid. Bandaged and feeling comfortable, Colliss told the whole story. How he had seen the man in the grounds, been surprised by the others, shot, and then – when Garrotty had finished with him – left for dead.
Warrender nodded slowly.
‘You’ve a lot in common with Rollison,’ he said. ‘In fact you’re the second man left for dead who’s very much alive. Rollison’s the other---’
‘The Winchester people, sir.’ Owen spoke from the doorway.
‘Oh – send the Inspector in,’ said Warrender.
He was annoyed that he had spoken of Rollison’s ruse in Owen’s hearing, but he saw no reason for believing that the man would allow his knowledge to leak out. He made a mental note to warn Owen later, and then concerned himself with orders to the local police against the possibility of further attempts on Colliss’s life, three police to take up residence at the house until further orders.
The formalities finished, Warrender at last had a chance of learning what Colliss had discovered in Stamboul about the Black Circle.
What he learned did not make him happy.
In any other form of organized crime, nothing happening would have been a good omen. It would have suggested that the gentry concerned had been made nervous of further efforts, and given the police time to make full inquiries.
When, for a week, nothing happened in the Dragoli case, Warrender was not happy – if anything he was more gloomy than he had been when he had taken Colliss’s report.
No reports were received that might have led to the finding of Dragoli, Garrotty, or the other members of the gang. No discoveries of caches of ‘snow’ were reported. True, there was no suggestion that the use of cocaine was getting appreciably more widespread than it had for years, but Warrender and others knew that was negligible evidence. It would take months, perhaps years, for the really malicious effect of the drug to materialize. A hundred thousand people might have been introduced to it in a week without the police getting an inkling of the truth.
Colliss had recovered quickly from his slight wounds, and was still guarded at ‘Homelea’. Chief-Inspector McNab carried his left arm in a sling, but was on duty. Detective-Sergeant Owen was still attached to the case, with another Chief Inspector whose discretion was thoroughly dependable, by name Wilkinson. Others, without knowing the real importance of the affair, had been engaged in trying to trace Garrotty and Dragoli, but without success.
With McNab, Warrender called at the nursing-home where the Hon. Richard Rollison was still staying, some ten days after the explosion at Shadwell. Rollison was up, clad in a brilliant dressing-gown, and sitting back with all his old assurance in an easy chair that normally had no place in the room’s furnishing. The Toff had a habit of getting what he wanted.
He had a small table in front of him, and a fountain pen in his left hand. He grinned up as Warrender and McNab entered, but went on with his job, the left hand moving slowly but firmly. Warrender frowned.
Taking art lessons, Rollison?’
The Toff smiled, and flipped a card across to the Assistant Commissioner, who managed to catch it.
‘Making the left hand do what the right ought to,’ he said lightly. ‘All in the way of business, Sir Ian.’
Warrender frowned down at a little, carefully executed drawing. A top hat set at a rakish angle, a monocle and a swagger cane. It was the first time he had looked on one of the visiting-cards that had once scared the life out of the deceased Harry the Pug.
‘My dear man –’
‘You haven’t heard me lecture,’ said the Toff, finishing a card with a flourish and laying his pen down, ‘on the merits of psychological terrorism, and you’ve missed a treat. Hasn’t he, Inspector? One of these cards, by the grace of God and a lot of luck, gets many folk worried. But that’s by the way – how’s things?’
‘I don’t like them,’ admitted Warrender.
‘Anything particular?’ asked Rollison. His right arm was in a sling to match McNab’s left, but the bandages were off his head. Two pieces of sticking-plaster decorated his left cheek.
‘Well, no. Excepting . . . .’
He launched into a recital of what Colliss had told him.
Colliss had managed to get a great deal of information in Stamboul, although little of it was definite. He had identified Dragoli, however, as an agent of a cocaine ring in Stamboul. Arrangements had been made and apparently were working smoothly, for the smuggling of the drug from China, across country to Stamboul, and then into Europe. The Black Circle was a wide organization – and the Stamboul authorities had been able to do little to stop its progress. It was a mixture, according to Colliss, of an Oriental Ku-Klux-Klan and the Ogpu. It had representatives in all manner of high places in Turkey and Egypt, and there seemed little chance of intercepting the supply of cocaine at its source.
‘Of course,’ said Warrender, ‘we shall warn the other countries. But our big task, Rollison, is to stop it getting a real hold in England.’
Rollison grinned.
‘A damned sight better to stop it at the source, but I’ll agree it’s not going to be easy. I’d like to meet this man Colliss, though, he seems a promising fellow. I – Come in.’
It was the nurse, and Rollison made a mock frown.
‘Now listen, I’m convalescing, Alice, and I won’t be warned not to get excited. I never do, anyhow, and –’
“This has just come in, sir,’ said the nurse, a middle-aged woman who had found it impossible to be severe with the Toff for long.
Rollison smiled as he took a letter, addressed to Mr. Bernard Browning. It might have been from Jolly, at the flat, or from Anne Farraway – but he had had a note from Anne on the previous day, saying that she was enjoying her stay with the Tennants, and that Ted Frensham, at her hosts’ invitation, was spending a few days in Surrey.
Moreover, he did not recognize the writing on the envelope.
With a murmured apology, he tore it open. And then he stared down, his face very hard. Warrender eyed him with growing alarm.
‘What is it, man?’
Rollison’s eyes held an expression that Warrender had never seen in them before.
‘Just a friendly little note,’ said the Toff bitterly. ‘From Dragoli.’
A pin would have sounded like a tin kettle dropping in the room as Warrender and McNab eyed the speaker. Rollison laughed shortly, and handed them the letter. It was typewritten, although the envelope had been addressed in handwriting, and it said simply:
Clever, Rollison, but not clever enough.
Warrender pushed his hand through his hair.
‘But – it’s impossible! ‘
‘God, how you do jump to the obvious!’ snapped the Toff, who was not in one of his best moods. ‘It’s possible, and it happened. How many people knew of this? Five?’
Warrender sat heavily on the bed.
‘Seven, Rollison. I told Colliss, and Owen heard me.’
‘Owen?’
‘My sergeant,’ explained McNab.
Rollison looked at both men without speaking for a few minutes, and then he stood up, taking a box of cigarettes from the table.
‘Well, the scheme’s busted, and we can’t undo it. I wish to heaven I could get busy.’
‘Don’t you realize,’ said Warrender slowly, ‘that someone must have told Dragoli about it? By the way, there’s Miss Farraway, and she
might
have taken your friends into her confidence.’
‘She might have done,’ admitted the Toff, ‘but the Tennants are as safe as I am about talking. We’ll assume she didn’t. We’ll assume that there are eight people altogether who knew the truth – and that’s seven too many,’ he added bitterly. ‘Yourself, Colliss, McNab, Owen, the nurse here, the house-surgeon at Grandleys, and I don’t think he would talk, Anne Farraway, and my man Jolly, as well as the innocent victim of the conspiracy, myself. And one of us talked.’
Warrender looked pale.