He felt a lump rise suddenly from his stomach to his throat. His voice was cracked.
‘The Toff! ‘
Squinty didn’t say a word. He was still seeing the incredibly thin and immaculate man whose grey eyes had seemed to burn into his soul – which was nearly impossible, for Squinty was more brute than man.
Harry the Pug felt very cold. He recognized the little picture on one side of the card, and did not trouble to read the other, introducing the Hon. Richard Rollison, of Gresham Terrace, W1. The picture was simple. Just a top hat set at a rakish angle, and immediately beneath it a monocle, and alongside both a swagger cane. The Toff called it his trade mark and used it only on business.
The Pug found his voice again, but he was still pale.
‘You darned fool! What did you bring it in for? Tell him I’m out. Tell him anything! I won’t see him. I won’t!’ His voice rose to a squeak. ‘Don’t you understand that, you squint-eyed fool? I won’t see him –’
And then he looked past Squinty, and his mouth stuck open.
‘Perfectly understood,’ murmured the Toff, from the door. ‘Too bad I followed Squinty up, wasn’t it?’
He walked softly across the parlour, reached Squinty, and snapped his fingers close to a cauliflower ear. Squinty went, and the Toff watched him close the door.
Then he turned to Harry the Pug.
‘Now we’re alone,’ he drawled, and sat down without being asked. ‘Keeping busy, Harry?’
The Pug bit his lip. This was the meeting he had tried more than anything else in the world to prevent. And now it had happened out of the blue. The Toff was sitting elegantly in front of him, lean hands playing idly with his cane, flinty eyes staring – staring.
Harry the Pug felt dreadfully afraid, but no one had ever called him yellow. His thick lips split.
‘What are you after, mister?’
‘If it eases your mind,’ said the Toff blandly, I’m not after you – yet. Information, Harry, with a capital “I”. Do we have a spot before you talk?’
Harry ignored the hint and he licked his lips.
‘I don’t know nothing,’ he said doggedly.
‘Too bad,’ murmured the Toff. ‘And I had it from very good authority that you know where Garrotty the Yank is staying at the moment. Much too bad!’
‘Never heard of him,’ lied Harry, who hated the drawling mockery of that ‘too bad’. ‘See here, mister, I’m on the level. I don’t say I ain’t been a bit gay in my time, but I’m finished now, and...’
He trailed off. The Toff’s eyes narrowed.
‘Stow it,’ he said sharply. ‘Where’s Garrotty?’
Under that frosty stare, Harry the Pug wilted, as many a better man would have done. He shifted his chair back, and the legs squeaked across the linoleum. The knobbly hand which he pushed over his flat brow was shaking.
Garrotty was nothing to him, anyhow.
‘Last I heard of him,’ he muttered, ‘he was at the “Steam Packet, Lambeth. But I ain’t working with him, mister, s’welp me, I ain’t!’
‘If it eases your mind,’ repeated the Toff smoothly, ‘I know you aren’t.’ His voice hardened. ‘But you had the chance, didn’t you?’
Harry kept silent. The thought that the Toff might know of his meeting with Dragoli made his stomach turn. Because the Toff, with his uncanny knack of squeezing information from the dregs of the underworld, was just as likely to know of some of the darker deeds in Harry’s past – and his present
The Toff broke the silence.
‘I’ll take yes for an answer, my little man.’
He stood up, so quickly that Harry didn’t notice he had moved until he stood by the window, leaning against the framework and staring across the parlour. His voice was dangerously smooth,
‘If the police knew half what I know about you, Harry, you wouldn’t be away from the rope for more than a couple of months. But you haven’t been working for a long time now – and I might let you off....’
Harry turned in his chair, his nostrils distended and the blood showing red beneath the several scars on his flattened face. He knew that the Toff was leading up to something; that the Toff was playing cat-and-mouse with him, as if delighting in the mental torture. And it says much for Harry’s fear of the Toff that he did not once think of using his knife, which he always carried.
What did the Toff want?
‘I’ll tell you,’ drawled Rollison, with whom mind-reading of a certain nature was an art. His voice dropped. ‘Achmed Dragoli’s been here. What was he after?’
So that was it. The Pug felt horribly afraid.
His tongue crept along his dry lips.
‘Who – who’s Dragoli?’
‘He’s the darkie,’ said the Toff patiently, ‘who came to see you a few days ago with a proposition. After seeing you he got in touch with Garrotty the Yank. What was his game?’
Harry the Pug squirmed. He was in a hell of a fix, and he knew it. The trouble was, knowing just how much the Toff was bluffing, and how much he really knew. Only the Toff could have answered it.
But there was one thing about the Toff which was generally admitted. He never went back on his word. If he promised to let Harry alone –
The Toff moved suddenly to the table where Harry was sitting. He stared down at the ex-bruiser, and there was a wicked smile at the corners of his lips.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he claimed gently. ‘Listen, Harry. Spill everything, don’t mix any lies, and I’ll leave you alone for your past. That doesn’t cover anything you do in the future, mind you.’
For a moment they stared at each other. Harry’s little eyes shifted first, then his lips opened.
‘To start you off,’ drawled the Toff, who saw that his victory was won so far, and decided the time for his bluff had come, ‘he mentioned a man named Goldman. I know Garrotty killed Goldman, and I want to know why. See?’
Harry saw. And he was afraid, because what little he knew might not satisfy the Toff.
‘He didn’t say who,’ he muttered. ‘Believe it or not, mister, he didn’t mention a name. All he said was there was a yob he wanted out of the way, and somehow he got an idea I’d do it,’ The Pug grew very indignant. ‘And I turned him flat, mister, you kin take it from me! I never mixed myself up in a game like that, an’ I ain’t goin ter –’
‘Of course you ain’,’ drawled the Toff. ‘But he told you something else, Harry. Spill it!’
Harry the Pug looked like an ape in a tight corner. The blood showed livid in his many scars.
‘He didn’t mister, s’welp me! He just said he’d got a job, and it had to be finished quick.’
The Toff’s eyes sparkled for that was worth knowing. But he wanted more yet, and he had an idea that Harry could give it to him.
His lips were very close together.
‘Don’t call me mister,’ he said unpleasantly. ‘And don’t try to fool me, Harry.’ He paused for a second, leaned towards the Pug, and then he drawled: ‘Who sent Dragoli to you, Harry?’
It happened as he had expected it to happen.
The Pug’s face literally blanched. In those piggish eyes leapt an expression of fear which the Toff knew was not inspired by himself.
Harry’s lips worked convulsively. He faltered: ‘What – what do you mean?’
‘Stop fooling!’ snapped the Toff. ‘Someone sent Dragoli to you – and you know who it was.’
For a full minute they stared at each other; and for a moment the Toff thought that the sinister influence which had a stranglehold on Harry the Pug would frustrate him.
But suddenly the Pug’s resistance drooped.
‘Supposin’ I tell you? You don’t know ‘em, anyway.’
‘I know lots of things,’ said the Toff lightly, ‘that you wouldn’t dream. Stop stalling, Harry.’
The Pug’s voice was hoarse. His eyes went to and fro, furtive, fearful.
‘If you will have it, mister – it was the Black Circle.’
And for a moment there was dead silence in the room. The Toff stared at the Pug, and the Pug drew back. For the Toff’s eyes were like steel, making the Pug squirm.
And yet the Toff was just thinking blindly. The Black Circle meant nothing at all to him; he had never heard of it. But it was a big thing in Harry the Pug’s sinful life.
The Toff tried another shot.
‘The Black Circle is it?’ he said. ‘Well, what does that association do for its living, Harry?’
He stared hard, but the Pug kept silent, a sullen obstinate silence with more than a tinge of fear.
‘Come on,’ snapped the Toff, with an ugly glint in his eyes. ‘Spill it!’
The Pug kept quiet for a moment. His little eyes were darting to and fro, fearfully.
‘I daren’t tell you,’ he said at last. ‘I just daren’t, mister!’
And the Toff knew that he had come up against a brick wall. It made him very thoughtful, for if the Black Circle was dangerous enough to make Harry the Pug refuse to squeal, it was very big indeed.
Yet the Toff did not want to force the Pug’s hand too far. Up to now Harry had been useful; he still would be if the Toff handled him properly.
‘And so,’ said the Toff smoothly, ‘you won’t come across, won’t you?’
The Pug cringed.
‘I daren’t, I tell you! They’d kill me if I squealed.’
‘That wouldn’t do any harm,’ the Toff said brutally. Then he grinned, and took a chance shot. ‘So they’d kill you, would they – just as they killed Goldman? And – he stared very hard into the Pug’s shifty eyes –’for the same reason, Harry?’
The Pug hesitated.
‘Spill it!’ growled the Toff.
‘Well,’ muttered Harry reluctantly, ‘I reckon Goldman was going to squeal, mister –’
‘Fine!’ breathed the Toff.
The Pug’s admission meant a lot. Goldman had been killed because he was ready to betray Dragoli and the mysterious Black Circle. But the knowledge did not take the Toff very far. He was as much in the dark as ever about the girl who had been with Goldman when he had been murdered.
Again a silence fell over the room, tense, expectant. The Pug stared fearfully at his interrogator.
‘Fine!’ repeated the Toff suddenly and made another thrust, although he doubted whether Harry could help him much. ‘Where does the girl come in?’
The Pug was surprised into gaping silence. He did not even protest that he knew nothing.
‘All right,’ said the Toff ironically, ‘I’ll believe you.’
Then it seemed to the Pug that the Toff disappeared. One moment he was in the room, and the next he was gone. The Toff had that uncanny knack of being somewhere else before a man realized that he had moved at all.
For the moment the Toff had learned all there was to learn from Harry the Pug, and he had learned a great deal more than he had expected. He knew now why Goldman had been killed, and he was inclined to agree with McNab that the dead man was crooked, through and through. Squealing put a man right beyond the pale.
And he knew that Dragoli was an agent of the Black Circle, and if he was completely fogged by the game that the organization was playing, he did not intend to be in the dark much longer.
But there were other things. Why had the police held back the news of the murder? And – more important – where did the Lady of the Shoe come in?
The Toff didn’t know, but he had an ingenious mind. He wondered if the girl had known any or all of what Goldman had sold his life for. If she did, it was a black outlook for her.
‘But not so black,’ said the Toff suddenly, as he swung the Sunbeam into the Mile End Road, ‘as it would have been if I hadn’t learned that Garrotty is staying at the “Steam Packet”, Lambeth. Dragoli won’t be far away, I’ll wager.’
And, as had happened before, he would have won his bet.
As befitted the occasion, the Toff was very thoughtful on the drive to his flat. So thoughtful that when he reached Gresham Terrace and found a carefully-packed parcel, shaped like a hat-box and labelled with the sacred name of a certain famous hatter, he took it to the bathroom and turned the hot water on, soaking the package for an hour before opening it.
Undoubtedly he bought his hats from that firm. But when he cut the string and found the sodden body of a blood-lusting tarantula, whose first bite would have sent him to a very unpleasant death, he was glad that he had been careful.
It was very quick work indeed. He must have been shadowed to Harry the Pug’s, and his trailers must have taken it for granted that Harry would squeal something which was bad for Harry. But the Toff, who was very thorough, had more than an idea that the Black Circle was ruthless in the extreme, and he had been on the look-out for attacks.
The nature of it annoyed him. It was high time he had an interview with Dragoli, the mystery man from the East.
On the day that the Toff called on Harry the Pug, the second waiter at the ‘Steam Packet’, which is at the corner of Duke Street and York Road, Lambeth, with a fine view of the Houses of Parliament from the top windows, wrote a maudlin letter of apology to Blind Sletter, who owned the ‘Steam Packet’. He had, it appeared, met with’ an accident, and he would not be able to work for some weeks to come.
Blind Sletter did not read the note because he could not; his interest was negligible, however, when Castillo, his manager, told him about it.
‘Get another man,’ said Sletter plaintively. He was a very old, white-haired gentleman, held in high esteem by those who didn’t know him well enough. Such a harmless, well-meaning old soul. ‘You can wait on the private rooms, Castillo,’ he finished up.
Castillo, a Spaniard of uncertain lineage, bowed from force of habit and went out to look after the running of the restaurant, including the hiring of a new waiter.
The ‘Steam Packet’ was one of those semi-high-class restaurants with which London abounds. Just too far from things theatrical to lure the West End crowds, it had a large clientele from goggle-eyed suburbanites who were easily persuaded to believe that it was the real thing.
A contributing factor to its success was its absolute respectability beneath its shroud of daring, or bare-legged ballet dancers. No one, least of all the police, who are chronically suspicious of restaurants, suspected the many strange things which changed hands over Blind Sletter’s plain desk in his simple office at the extreme end of the ‘Steam Packet’s’ premises.
Sletter passed dope, and jewels, and bonds, if they were safe enough, and he had a rich picking.