Salute the Toff (9 page)

 

The Toff knew the chief cause of the trouble. He had not known when the case started, had been unable to get to the heart of it, and was compelled to keep following trails which might help him, yet might prove to be blind alleys.

As he drove behind the Morris, towards Aldgate, and presumably towards the centre of London, he reflected that during the past twenty-four hours Lorne had learned that Benny had not killed Draycott. At Manchester Lorne had believed that Draycott was dead, now he knew differently.

There were other things about Lorne worthy of attention.

At the moment of the returned visiting-card, the man had seemed to have qualities which could be admired but that was cancelled out by the murder of Myra. Whether she had played any vital part in the affair seemed unlikely.

Lorne had told her to ‘go back where she belonged', of course, and had sneered that she would be well-off and out of danger. Well – many a woman had left a good home to consort with a rogue; and more often than not such
mésalliances
went wrong.

The Toff forgot Myra as he reached Piccadilly.

Theatre traffic had been thick enough to make reasonably sure that he was not seen following the other car, and he had had no difficulty doing the job mechanically. At Piccadilly, the other car beat him at the lights, and he was not sure which way it went. He took a chance, going round Piccadilly at a speed which policemen disliked; but the Toff saw his quarry speeding along Grosvenor Place. From there it reached Victoria, Ebury Bridge, Chelsea, and then Fulham.

It turned off New King's Road near Parson's Green.

There was little traffic, but two buses were between the Toff and the Morris, and that probably enabled the Toff to get through unseen. He turned down a side-turning, and saw the Morris parked outside a house which was one of a long series of terraces. The door opened and the driver was outlined against if for a moment, a sleek-looking youth, who was being admitted by a woman whose frizzy hair was also made into a silhouette by the hall light. The door closed then, and the Toff drove a few yards along, and left the car.

He walked back slowly to the house where his quarry had disappeared.

It was No. 18 Bruce Street. With that address firmly in his mind, he let the air out of two of the Morris's tyres, and opened the iron gate of the small front garden. Light was shining faintly at the front door, but he would not be able to force the lock without making a noise.

There was no light in the window on the right of the doorway, except that which was shining through from the hall, or another room. That was sufficient to show him the layout of the room, and that there was nothing near the window, which was tightly closed.

The catch was set, but the Toff was able to open it with a penknife. He slid the window up, wincing when it squeaked, but it was wide enough for him to get through at last. He stepped through, then stood for some seconds in the semi-darkness. He could hear voices from an upstairs room.

Then he heard a sharp cry from a woman or girl. There was a dull thud from the room above, and a woman's – or a girl's – voice came so clearly that it was impossible not to recognise it.

“I tell you he didn't!”

Fay Gretton was in this house.

 

It was the first real break that the Toff had received in this grim business, but it made up for many of the other disappointments. He learned of the capture of Fay only when he had found her.

He went into the hallway and walked softly up the stairs. He heard Lorne's voice.

“Don't keep lying to me. And if you shout I'll strangle you!”

Fay said nothing.

The Toff reached the landing and saw the door through which light was coming. It was strange that Lorne should risk trying to get information in a house where sound travelled so easily, and where every room had a window fairly close to the road or the houses in the adjoining street. He did not ponder long, but turned the handle of the door and opened it casually.

There was a shaded electric light, with Fay sitting on a chair – not bound or gagged, but sadly dishevelled and with the shoulder of her suit jacket torn. She was staring defiantly at Lorne and a smaller, swarthy man – the driver of the Morris – and if she was afraid she hid it well.

Lorne started to say: “I'll give you one more chance—” but before he could finish the Toff spoke in a rough voice that no one would have recognised as his: “Cut it out, you swine.”

The big man swung round, and his companion turned, but neither moved further when they saw the gun in a hand that looked dirty even under the nails. With a peaked cap pulled over his eyes, and the rough clothes the Toff looked less like himself than a stevedore. His eyes were half hidden, and he spoke without opening his mouth much.

“Who the hell are you?” Lorne gasped.

“You'll learn,” said the Toff. He saw the swarthy-faced man with Lorne, and now that he was at close quarters he fancied that he had seen him before, but he could not be sure where. “You git up,” he said to Fay.

“It's one of those bloody prizefighters,” the swarthy man said hoarsely.

“Keep yer mahth shut!” snapped the Toff, as Fay reached his side. He kept the gun on the others, but backed with Fay towards the door. He did not propose to take the slightest risk of injury to her.

He slipped out and closed the door.

He had taken the key out, and then he locked the door on them before hurrying down the stairs. By then Lorne had shouted in alarm or warning, and the door at the end of the ground-floor passage opened. From the front door the Toff saw a woman with frizzy grey hair. She called out in a high-pitched voice, but he did not catch the words. He opened the front door, and Fay went out swiftly, with him on her heels.

The door banged.

Then Rollison said in his normal voice: “Nice work, Fay! Now go and find a policeman or a call-box. Eighteen Bruce Street wants raiding in a hurry.”

She gasped:
“Rolly
!”

“Get a move on!” urged the Toff, and blessed her when she turned and ran. He heard her high heels tapping the pavement, and moved back into shadows so that he could not be seen from the house opposite.

The door opened.

The woman came first, but Lorne pushed past her. The swarthy man slammed the door, which reverberated along the street. Lorne bundled into the Morris and pulled at the self-starter; the others climbed in at the back. As they did so the Toff walked towards the side of the car, which started abruptly, jolted, started again, and then stopped.

“A tyre's flat!” snarled Lorne. “Get out, all of you. There's a car further along. We'll take it.”

“Oh no,” said the Toff from the shadows. “That wouldn't do at all; it's mine.”

Lorne said: “My God—Rollison!”

“Again,” said the Toff. “I sent a friend, and there are others watching. Stay just where you are, all three of you.”

Lorne gasped: “Now, listen, Rollison—”

“Later,” said the Toff. “There are a lot of things I could do to hear from you, among them more of Myra and Benny. But for the moment stay where you are.”

To them it must have been uncanny.

His voice came from the shadows, and they could not see him. Nor could they see others, but they imagined more were there. The Toff knew that they were trying to make up their minds to a sudden rush for safety, and yet were afraid that if they were outnumbered they would meet with disaster. He heard Lorne mutter under his breath, and the other man answer. The woman said clearly: “We can't do it.”

“Shut your trap!” snarled Lorne.

And then things happened which the Toff had not expected.

It started when a car swung round the corner, with headlights full on, and bathing the whole street with light. In it the Toff was clearly visible, as was the fact that no one else was about. Lorne started to open the door. The Toff was prepared to shoot to stop him—

But a bullet came from the bigger car, close to his head!

He heard the thud as it hit the wall, and he ducked. He swung round, went through an open gateway and took cover in one of the shallow porchways of a house opposite No. 18. The shooting did not stop, but chipped pieces out of the bricks of the porch. The car slowed down, and he could hear but not see Lorne and the others scrambling into it.

Rollison fired for the tyres, but missed. Before he could shoot again the car gathered speed and swept towards the end of the road. As it passed Bert's car he saw a stab of flame and then another, and the tyres of the stationary car burst with loud reports that startled the residents of Bruce Street.

Windows were going up, and heads were thrust out. A man kept calling: “What's up there, what's up?”

Others added to the general din. Doors opened then, and two men came somewhat hesitantly into the street, but before they reached the Toff, or the Toff reached them, Fay and a policeman arrived from New King's Road. It was as well they had come late, for they might have been injured. But that was the only satisfaction Rollison obtained, except the doubtful one of half an hour at Parson's Green Police Station with Fay, while his identity was established with the Yard. While he was waiting, 18 Bruce Street was entered by the police, but there were no papers of significance, and nothing to say where Lorne or the others might have gone.

The Toff did not ask questions as they were driven back to the West End. From his flat they telephoned Anthea, who proved to be frantic with anxiety, and who said she had been ringing the Toff at five-minute intervals. She promised to come round at once for Fay, who still looked dishevelled but showed little sign of her ordeal.

She had gone for a walk late that evening, and had been followed – she had thought by one of the boxers. But she had been hustled into a taxi, and a scarf had been used to gag her. She had lost consciousness, and come round in the house where the Toff had found her.

“It's so fantastic, Rolly. That blond brute wanted to know where Jimmy was. He thinks you know, and was sure you would have told me. Why
do
they want him?”

The Toff said, sombrely: “Because they don't like to think he's alive.”

“But why on earth not?”

“I'm inclined to think that's the only question to matter.
I—blast
that 'phone!”

It was rare that he confounded the telephone, but it interrupted at a moment when he wanted to ask more questions of Anthea. He stepped to it, lifted it, and heard McNab's voice.

“Rolleeson, are ye there?”

“I think so,” said the Toff.

“I want tae know what ye've been doing in Fulham, Rolleeson, but I've a wee bit of news ye'll want to hear yereself.”

“I'm thirsting for it,” said the Toff.

“Ye'll be surprised,” said McNab, and paused, and then went on: “The woman Myra has been identified. She's Harvey's wife. Can you beat that?”

The Toff stared at Fay, who was on tenterhooks, and swallowed hard.

Myra was Phyllis Harvey's mother!

 

 

The Toff did not ask whether there was any possibility of mistake; he learned that both Phyllis Harvey, and Mortimer, her father, had seen and identified the body. Harvey had shown little or no emotion; the girl had swooned.

“Thanks for the call, Mac,” the Toff said. “You'll find out what you can about the Bruce Street house.”

“I will. It's a peety, Rolleeson, ye didna get the number of the big car which took Lorne away.”

“I thought the same thing,” the Toff said solemnly.

He returned to Fay, and told her, simply, and although she was surprised she was not appalled. She had known that Harvey and his wife did not get on well, and in fact had told the Toff.

“Now it's beginning to look as if Lorne enticed Myra from her husband because he needed her help. But no woman would leave her husband without a good reason.”

Fay said quietly: “Harvey is a sarcastic beast.”

“Sarcasm on its own is hardly enough for separation,” said the Toff. “Slowly and surely we move towards the heart of this affair—the Mid-Provincial Building Society, or something connected with it.”

“Can you be sure?”

“I can think I'm sure,” said the Toff. “In the first place, Draycott, who has just lost an agency for it, disappears, and is in danger of murder. In the second, Lorne has an affair with Harvey's wife, clearly to obtain information. Lorne is the man who thought he had arranged for Draycott's murder, and that connects the two factors. Harvey, as the retired director, is a common denominator. The shares I found in Lorne's safe may or may not implicate Murray and Firth, the firm which won the agency from Draycott, but it will be as well if they answer some questions.”

“Will the police ask them?”

The Toff regarded her with one eyebrow raised a little above the other.

“The police may or may not believe that Mid-Provincial are playing a large if indirect part, and probably know nothing of Draycott's loss of the agency. By the way, you were at the office today?”

“Of course. Things were much the same.”

“What do the other staff think?”

“That Jimmy's away on business. The police were there last night, apparently, but the rest of the staff don't know why.”

“Which is McNab being cunning,” ruminated the Toff. “Will you think it breaking faith if you let me see the correspondence of the Murray-Firth-Mid-Provincial argument?”

“No, but I don't think it will do much good. I know the file well. It's quite ordinary. When do you want to see it?”

“Now,” said the Toff.

“Tonight I—oh, well,” said Fay, and she smiled. “I'll have to tidy myself up a bit.”

She was doing her hair when Anthea arrived with Jamie. Jamie was clearly determined to act the knight errant until the danger was over. The Toff was puzzled by the failure of Bert's men to keep Fay watched, and he hoped that nothing had happened to them.

As if to answer his unspoken queries, Bert telephoned. He was in a most apologetic mood, for he had heard from Manchester. He was a little reproachful, for he considered that Mr. Ar should have told him the truth, and he said earnestly that he would not have had it happen for the world. And then there was something just as bad. Tibby Mendoz – Mr. Ar would remember Tibby; he was the promising little lightweight who had been at the Ring several times – had been watching 1023 Bayswater Road. He had been persuaded to leave his post for five minutes, been hit over the head, and delivered to his home address some hours later. For a while he had been nervous of advising Bert, but at last had plucked up courage to do so.

“I wouldn't have 'ad it happen,” said Bert with a fine mixture of aspirates, “fer the world, Mr. Ar. Did I give Tibby a dressin'down!”

“Go easy with him,” pleaded the Toff. “It might have been a lot worse, Bert. I'll get you to send him and another man back to the house. In a couple of hours from now will do. All right?”

“You betcher life.”

“Good man,” said the Toff. “And I'm more than ever anxious to hear what you can find about Kless.”

“Okay,” said Bert.

“And then there's a man in this who might be an Italian. Short, slim, marcelled hair—you know the type. Keep your eyes open for him, Bert, and tell the watchers at Bayswater Road to be wary of him.”

“Right y'are,” said Bert.

The Toff thanked him and rang off. He did not explain in any detail to Jamie, but Anthea and Jamie insisted on joining the expedition.

“It's all right with me,” said the Toff, “but the police might not agree, and they'll almost certainly be watching.”

But it appeared that they were not.

Fay had the keys of the office, and was able to get in without any question from waiting policemen. The Toff watched the outside of the tall office building where Draycott ran his business, but saw no one who might be a policeman. He looked about the small outer office. There were four rooms, three very small and the other much larger, where Draycott and Fay worked. The furniture was not new, but neither was it old. The filing system was on modern lines, and in steel cabinets. About the office there was a suggestion that Draycott's business was flourishing.

A small vase of roses was on Fay's desk.

She obtained the Mid-Provincial file for the Toff, and he sat at Draycott's desk and looked through the more recent correspondence. He hoped to find something which might suggest why Draycott was frightened. After twenty minutes Anthea grew restless.

“Do we have to stay here all night, Rolly?”

The Toff smiled.

“You invited yourself, my sweet, but far be it from me to detain you. Fay, did Draycott keep a personal file here?”

“Yes, in his desk.”

“Have you a key?”

“No,” said Fay, but she indicated the drawer where the Toff would find it. Then for the first time Jamie and Anthea felt that there was interest in the evening, and they watched him insert a thin blade of his knife, and do strange things to the lock of the drawer. It clicked back after several minutes of manipulation, and Anthea said: “What a good thing you're not a thief, Rolly!”

“How do you know I'm not?” demanded the Toff.

He ran through the files in the drawer. He knew that Fay was also watching, and he was not surprised when he said after a few seconds: “It's not there now.”

“I was afraid not,” said the Toff. “The inference is that he took it with him, although of course it might have been stolen. Oh, well. We'd better call it a day, although it might be an idea if I looked through these papers. I—oh, damn I” broke off the Toff. “I'm suffering from colour-blindness. The police have searched this thoroughly, of course.”

“Meaning they might have taken the file?”

“It could be.” Rollison shrugged and stood up. He looked weary, and more than a little disgruntled. “I think—”

Then he stopped.

The other wondered why he was looking towards the outer door, but they did not wonder for long, for they too heard the noise at the lock, a scratching sound suggesting that someone was trying to emulate the Toff and get in where he should not without a key. The Toff said sharply: “Keep quiet, all of you. I'm going to put out the light.”

The door leading to the outer office was closed, and it was not likely that any light showed into the passage. The switch went up, and they waited with bated breath in the darkness.
Sotto voce
the Toff instructed them to stay exactly where they were, and told them that he was going to the outer office. They did not hear him move, but they could still hear the noise at the door.

Then came a sharp click!

They were on tenterhooks, while the Toff – just behind the door, and where he would not be seen when it was opened – waited eagerly.

The door creaked as it opened.

There was a moment of silence before a light was switched on. It made the Toff blink, but although it shone through into the other office it did not show the three waiting there.

A man stood there, a man who started to close the door. The Toff saw his hand, and kept his own hand in his pocket with the fingers about the gun. The door closed softly, and the Toff saw the intruder.

Jolly
had returned from his quest in Hampshire; and had burglariously entered the office of James Draycott!