It was one of a number of large, impressive-looking houses, surrounded by nearly an acre of garden – a large area in that part of London. Willow, apparently, had plenty of money; no one with less than five thousand a year could have lived in Dane Street, and kept his household at the standard it should be; or so thought the Toff. But then, five thousand a year was not an excessive income for the managing director of a comparatively large chemical-manufacturing company.
The Toff, with his forefinger on the bell, tried to tell himself that whatever happened he would keep an open mind. It was disconcerting for him to find that he wanted to make either Kellson or Willow a villain of the piece.
Yet he was doubtful –
He was surprised when the door opened within a second of his finger leaving the bell-push. A butler, dressed in black, peered at him short-sightedly; odd for a butler to wear glasses, thought the Toff.
The man was otherwise unremarkable. He was middling-sized, a little bony, and with a slightly over-developed stomach. His voice was as dull and expressionless as any the Toff had heard.
‘Mr. Bernard Browning?’
‘Yes,’ smiled the Toff, anxious to make a good impression.
‘Mr. Willow is expecting you, sir. Will you please step this way?’
The Toff stepped over the threshold, and surrendered his hat, gloves, and stick. The lighting was good, but subdued. It showed that Mr. James Willow was a man of taste, with modern tendencies. The furniture was walnut, and here and there chromium plating glinted its pale silver reflection. The carpet was good but not ostentatious; a brown and fawn, mottled a little.
The butler reached the second door on the right, leading from the front porch, opened it, and in a deeper voice than he had used before, announced Mr. Bernard Browning. The Toff kept his right hand very near his pocket, for although there was no reason to believe that he would meet trouble, he was always prepared for the worst.
He did not think it would come.
A short, fat, fussy-looking little man in a dinner jacket, and with his stiff boiled shirt-front gaping open where a stud had parted company, stepped sharply towards him, his hand outstretched. The Toff shook hands; Mr. Willow’s palm, despite its plumpness, was cool; and his grip was firm.
‘Good evening, sir, good evening. I don’t know how I can help you, but your telephone message was worrying. Yes, worrying.’ He stood peering at the Toff, apparently as short-sighted as his butler, and Rollison just waited, prepared to hear anything. Willow seemed to hope for some help, but he went on at last, his voice somewhat high-pitched, his red lips moving in a careful articulation of every word; like a man, thought the Toff, who had taken lessons in elocution and could not forget the first principles.
‘It is Kellson I can’t understand,’ he explained. ‘Most concerned, he seemed. And another telephone call came soon after yours. Kellson had to go at once; he refused to explain, but told me he would try to get back before two o’clock. I wish – I wish I knew why, Mr. Browning.’
The Toff also wished he know why.
He did not let his curiosity prevent him from studying Willow. The little fat man seemed far more perturbed than the circumstances warranted, and the Toff was prepared to wager heavily that there was something else weighing heavily on his mind. Willow, in fact, looked like a man who wanted to talk badly, as though he had been worried for a long time, and had been keeping his anxieties to himself.
Of course, it might be a nicely set trap; Rollison knew he was playing in one of the deepest games he had tackled for a long time, and the opposition was cleverer by far than the level, say, of Garrotty. But this comical little man...
‘I’m sorry Mr. Kellson’s out,’ said the Toff cheerfully, as though he was not particularly perturbed. ‘He can’t have been gone for long?’
‘A little – a little over a quarter of an hour.’ Willow blinked, and then suddenly remembered his duties to a visitor. ‘Sit down, please. Please sit down.’
Rollison obliged, he felt more tired than he had expected, and he was glad to take the weight off his feet.
‘Will you smoke? A little drink?’
The Toff’s case was in his hand. Willow shook his head, and the Toff selected a cigarette and lit it with deliberate care. He was watching Willow closely, and now he could see the little beads of sweat on the man’s forehead and his upper lip.
‘Well, well?’ The words came out like bullet shots. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’
Tell me,’ said the Toff very gently, ‘how long have you been so worried, Mr. Willow? And why?’
The words dropped out slowly. Willow’s eyes widened until they looked like little white circles with the small blue pupils darting to and fro. His hand reached for his bow tie and fiddled with it.
‘What – what do you mean, sir?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ asked the Toff.
And then Willow did what the Toff had expected and hoped for. He started to talk. The words poured out in a hot stream, and there was no pausing now to make sure that each one was pronounced carefully. James Willow was revealed as a rather common little man who usually managed at some effort to control his accent, but it revealed itself now.
‘Yes, yes, I’m worried as hell! I don’t know ‘ow you know, but – listen, Browning! I’ve been too scared for a month to walk about without worryin’! Afraid they’ll get me, the swine. They’ll get me, and Kellson, they’ll break us as they’ve been tryin’ for a year. Threats, threats – my Gawd, if they don’t stop they’ll drive me crazy! Crazy!’
Willow stopped. He was breathing hard, and his lips gaped open. The Toff moved quickly to a small sideboard, lifted a decanter, and poured a finger of neat whisky into a glass. He did not trouble to add water, but handed it to Willow. The man drank it down without a protest, and spluttered as the fiery spirit bit at his throat.
‘Here – here!’ He had recovered something of his poise. ‘I don’t reckon to drink it neat, sir! ‘
‘It’ll do you good,’ said the Toff easily. ‘Now, who’s been threatening you, and why?’
Willow glared at him.
‘I – I shouldn’t ‘ave talked. Who – who
are
you?’
‘I’m not a member of the police force,’ said the Toff easily, ‘and I’ve certainly no ill intent towards you, Mr. Willow. In fact, I could almost say that I’m a friend. I fancy that this “they” of yours are making themselves unpleasant in many ways, and I want to meet them. Now you’ve said something, why not tell me the whole story?’
Willow sat back heavily in a chair. He looked like a little round ball in it, but his eyes were frightened again, the momentary indignation gone.
‘Ow – how do I know you’re not connected with the police?’
‘You’ll have to take my word for it.’
Willow started to bluster, but it did not last for long. The Toff, using that persuasiveness of his, worked his man to the right state of mind, and then listened to the story of James Willow.
‘It’ had apparently started a year before, when Willow had received a threatening letter, identical with one that Kellson received on the same day. The threat was of disclosure of a habit that Kellson and Willow, Ltd., had developed of evading Customs duty on certain imported raw materials. Willow did not explain how the duty had been evaded, but he admitted it was a fact. Moreover, the total sum over a five-year period had been over forty thousand pounds.
The Toff admitted that they had operated it properly.
As far as the partners knew, no one but three men confidentially employed knew of the evasion. Those three men were quite reliable – or Willow believed they were. But the blackmail had started.
The firm had paid out small sums at first, then larger ones. At the same time – and with a belated caution – they had stopped avoiding the duties. But if the truth was revealed they stood a risk of serving a prison sentence, and at the best paying a colossal fine.
They had kept paying, but the demands had grown larger; Kellson – from Willow’s talk, Kellson was the stronger man of the two, and obviously the leading spirit – had determined to refuse.
For three months – the blackmail had been paid monthly, to the Leadenhall Street branch of the National United Bank, and to the credit of a Mr. Jones – they had made no payments. Then threats of murder had started....
Willow finished. His frightened eyes were fixed appealingly on the Toff, and Rollison felt sorry for the fat little fellow.
‘So – so you see...’
‘There are odds and ends I don’t see,’ admitted the Toff. ‘How did the gentlemen start on you?’
‘You mean, how did they communicate? By telephone, sir.’
‘I see. And all orders were given by telephone?’
‘Yes, yes, they were.’
‘You have no idea at all of the identity of the blackmailer?’
‘No, no!’ Willow jumped from his chair and started to pace the room. ‘We have nothing at all, Browning, not a clue! What could we do? If we refused, if we tried to find out anything, we would be reported to the police. It would break our business – one of the biggest in England. You understand?’
The Toff did understand.
He did not belabour the unhappy Willow with the needless statement that if Willow and Kellson had kept clear of crime they would have had nothing to fear now. The situation had to be faced, but for the life of him he could not see how it concerned the Black Circle.
It had nothing to do with cocaine on the surface. But there was one possible way in which the two affairs could be connected. If Willow and Kellson could be easily blackmailed into paying heavy money for silence, could they not as easily be blackmailed into holding cocaine – as boracic acid, for instance – and sending it to various parts of the country when the orders were received?
It was possible, but Willow denied any other kind of pressure. He seemed lost and frightened, which was not remarkable. And he was scared by Kellson’s sudden departure.
The Toff waited until three o’clock, but no word came from Kellson, and the Toff decided it was unlikely he would return. But what message had taken him away?’
It was, he admitted as he walked home, one of his big mistakes. He should have called at Dane Street without consulting Willow by telephone. He had given the other man a chance of a get-away, and yet...
Unless Kellson had been told that Browning was Rollison, and a dangerous man, why should he have gone? And who but members of the Black Circle could have passed over that information?
The Toff, as he slipped between the sheets, told himself that instead of getting clearer, Frensham’s discovery had made the situation messier. He had asked Willow about the one-ounce packets of powder, but Willow had told him they were for special export orders, and seemed in no way concerned with them. He did not know that they signified anything out of the ordinary – if, indeed, they did – unless he was playing a part and deceiving the Toff: a possibility that Rollison preferred to ignore. He just did not believe it.
At ten o’clock the next morning, when Jolly stood by his bed with a telephone in one hand and a tea-tray in the other, the Toff stared up owlishly, and tried to collect his scattered thoughts. He looked at the tea longingly, and at the telephone with distaste.
‘Who is it, Jolly?’
‘A gentleman, sir, asking for Mr. Browning.’
The Toff’s muzziness cleared. He took the telephone to hear the agitated voice of James Willow, as he had half expected.
‘Hallo – Willow here, Willow. He’s not turned up at the office – he wasn’t home last night at all. I can’t –’
‘What’s his private address?’ demanded the Toff.
He collected it, told Willow not to worry, drank his tea and bathed. He was wrapped in a long bath towel when the telephone rang again: this time it was McNab.
‘Ye’ve been to Willow,’ said the Chief-Inspector heavily.
Tell me something new,’ implored the Toff. ‘Of course I’ve been to see Willow. You’ve heard the other fellow disappeared?’
‘I have – but Rolleeson, yon Willow doesna’ seem to me to be telling the whole truth. But there’s no trace of cocaine in the warehouses. He seemed scared, ye ken. What did he tell ye?’
‘A lot of things I promised not to tell you,’ said the Toff. ‘And as it doesn’t seem to affect the Black Circle, I don’t propose to – yet. Any of the prisoners talked yet, Mac?’
He seemed to ignore the fact that he had just refused information to the police, and McNab, who knew him too well to hope to force a statement, said that some of the prisoners had talked, but not a great deal.
‘Sir Ian would like to see ye,’ the inspector finished. ‘Will ye come round?’
‘As soon as I can,’ promised the Toff.
But as he breakfasted, he felt worried and uncertain. Five or six prisoners and none of them with information worth much. Damn it, they must have been able to tell what part they played in the Black Circle’s organization. Five men would not all hold out with half-truths.
Yet it seemed that they had; and their silence was made more effective by the fact that the warehouses of Willow and Kellson’s were innocent of snow.
Each one – except Garrotty and his men, who had simply refused to talk at all, and seemed to think that the English methods of interrogation were easily combated – said that they had met weekly at the warehouse for the past year. That they were usually given large parcels at the end of the meeting, and were told where to take the stuff. Usually it was to private houses, and the police had one or two addresses. The houses were always different, the prisoners claimed that they had no idea what was in the parcels, and – a point that made even the Toff believe that they were telling the truth – that they were paid five pounds each week for doing their job. Each man, moreover, was on the fringe of that community called the underworld; small-part thieves, pick-pockets, minor forgers. The men who had escaped, it was said, were all of the same category.
The little man had always done the talking and given instructions. Not one member of the party had officially known the other, but apparently during the year the mask rule had been more a matter of form than anything else, and everyone knew each other. On the previous night there had been one stranger, apart from the Toff.