The Toff And The Stolen Tresses - John Creasey

“That night Wallis and the other man came,” Rickett went on, steadily. “I couldn’t swear who they were. They had scarves over their faces, and cloth caps pulled low down. It wasn’t for over a month after I came out of hospital that I tied the two things up, Mr. Rollison. My memory wasn’t too good when I first came out, but now I’m seeing things straight, and I’ve heard about the other people who’ve suffered in the same way. If anything I say to you will help to put an end to it, then you’re welcome. I hope you won’t have to go to the police, but—”

“No police,” said Rollison quietly. Not about this. Who is the wholesaler?”

“Tom, don’t tell him!” Mrs. Rickett clutched her husband’s arm. “If you tell them they’ll know it was you, they’re bound to.”

“It’s Bishopps, of Penn Street,” Rickett said. His wife turned away, and covered her face with her hands.

“You won’t suffer for this,” Rollison promised Rickett, and prayed that he could make the promise good. “The first job I’m going to do is find some other lead to Bishopps and tell the world how I got on to them. It won’t bring reprisals on you.”

“Oh, you can talk,” the woman said drably.

“Do whatever you think is best,” said Rickett. “Someone had to start this, sooner or later.”

Rollison said: “Yes, someone had to.” He took Rickett’s hand, gripped hard, and then turned and went outside. He wasn’t surprised to see two youths standing at the corner across the road. They were staring insolently, and there was little doubt that they would report where Rollison had been and how long he had stayed. He drove off, watching them in the driving mirror, and telephoned Ebbutt’s gymnasium from the first telephone kiosk he saw.

“I’ll make sure the Ricketts are okay, Mr. Ar,” said Ebbutt, “you needn’t worry at all about that. Anyfink else?”

“Not yet but soon,” said Rollison, hopefully.

*     *     *

The second on the list of victims was a Herbert Smith, of Docksy Street. Rollison did not waste much time studying the board outside Smith’s small house, or the board over the big yard next to it.

BERT SMITH

Carrier Express Delivery Service

Anywhere in London

              Two small vans carrying the same wording were in the yard and as Rollison went in, he saw a stocky man get out of one of the vans, obviously with an effort; and when the man came towards him, it was apparent that he limped. He was bigger than Rickett, a tough-looking customer, but he stopped abruptly when he saw who it was.

In a flash, he said: “Don’t stay here, Mr. Rollison, I don’t want any more trouble. Last time they broke my leg in three places, that was bad enough.”

“One question,” said Rollison. “All you have to say is yes or no. Do you handle deliveries or do any work for Bishopps of Penn Street?”

“No harm in answering that,” Bert Smith said. “I’ve been their main delivery for fifteen years. But that’s all I’m going to tell you, don’t waste your time.”

“That’s all I wanted,” Rollison said, and turned and went away.

Would the other five victims be associated with Bishopps too?

It shouldn’t take long to find out.

*     *     *

Rollison made three more calls in the next hour, and the pattern was already clear; once one knew what the connection might be, it was obvious. One of the three had a shop, like Rickett; Rollison didn’t go in there, but telephoned from a nearby kiosk and asked if the man dealt with Bishopps; and was told yes. Jepson goods were in his window, too. The second man’s connection wasn’t so easy to find, but his wife did most of the talking, and revealed it without realising that she did.

“We haven’t the faintest idea why it happened, there wasn’t any reason at all as far as I could see. My husband’s led a good, honest sober life—why, he wouldn’t have kept the same job for twenty-three years if he hadn’t, would he?”

Rollison looked at the man; a frightened man, who undoubtedly knew more than he had told his wife.

And Rollison smiled.

“Twenty-three years with whom, Mr. Smart?”

“Why, Bishopps,” his wife answered, and Smart seemed to wince.

The next man was a warehouseman from Jepsons’ East End Warehouse.

The barber victim had often had Jepson goods delivered by Bishopps, too. The Blakes’ only association with either firm seemed to be through their lodger, Jones.

Next there was a man named Joseph Jackson, with an address in Aldgate. Rollison pulled up round the corner from his house and walked briskly towards it, with a dozen or so other people, all hurrying home from their work. No one took any notice of him. This was a better class street than most along here, and there was none of the poverty so prevalent nearer the docks.

Jackson lived at Number 17.

It was a three-storied house, freshly painted, with clean lace curtains at the window, deep cream in colour, and with a truly magnificent aspidistra in the window, next to a huge china cat won from some fair ground. Rollison stood facing the door so that no one passing by was likely to recognise him. Foot-steps, heavy and deliberate, came immediately upon his knock at the door.

Was this another cripple?

The door began to open, very slowly; and then it moved swift as a flash, and Tiny Wallis lunged forward to grab at Rollison’s wrist.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

No Chance

Rollison had a split second to jump back, and tried to; but he was too late. Wallis caught his right wrist and twisted, pain shot up his arm, and he was jolted forward. He could not save himself, and collided with Wallis, who stood like a rock. And as Rollison dropped back, Wallis kicked the door to with his foot, then struck Rollison twice, once beneath the chin, once in the stomach with such power that Rollison went dizzy.

He felt himself grabbed and dragged along the narrow, dark passage. A light came on, dazzling him. His head was muzzy and he had no control of his legs or arms, the blows had been calculated to paralyse him. With one part of his mind he realised this, and also realised that he hadn’t a chance: with the other, he tried to make out where they were taking him.

Men spoke, roughly. Two of them held Rollison upright. A bright light was just above his head, and it hurt his eyes. He could see the men with strange, shimmery, blurred faces. Then he was pushed round. Beneath him there stretched a staircase, and it seemed a vast distance to the bottom, not just a flight of stairs but steps leading down into the unknown.

A man pushed, another kicked him behind the knees. He pitched downwards, thrusting out his hands against the wall to try to save himself. He failed. He felt great fear rising in him as he struck a stair with his head, but he didn’t lose consciousness. He fell from step to step, each bump painful but none agonising. Then he felt himself lying on the floor without moving; at the foot of the stairs, of course. He closed his eyes for a moment. All he wanted to do was lie there; but suddenly he realised that they would come down after him, and a kind of terror caught him as he tried to scramble to his feet and look up the stairs at the same time. Wallis was walking down.

Rollison felt even more like panic.

He warned himself: “Don’t lose your head, don’t let him see how you feel,” and that helped. He stopped scrambling and trying so desperately, his movements were calmer as he got to his feet, although he had to pull himself up with the help of a handrail. Wallis was the man who could strike terror into so many, who had broken bodies and minds, who had ruined lives. He was halfway down the stairs, stepping on each tread deliberately, as if he knew that the longer he took, the worse Rollison would feel. Rollison stood swaying. There was another door, to the right, and he could smell coal and oil, but all he could see through the doorway was a black void.

If he backed even a pace, he would turn and try to run, and Wallis would gloat.

If he could gain even a few minutes, he might have a chance to hit back. He had the automatic in his pocket and the two knives: two minutes to steady himself would help, even one. The sight of the gun might hold Wallis off, anyhow. Rollison gritted his teeth painfully because of the blow he’d received, and moved his right hand to his pocket for the gun.

It wasn’t there.

Wallis thrust his great left hand forward, and the small gun rested on it like a fat grey slug.

“This what you’re looking for?”

Rollison moistened his lips, but didn’t speak.

“I didn’t think it would take long to make you shut your trap,” Wallis growled. “You’ve done all the talking you’re going to do, to the cops or to Ebbutt or to anyone at all. You’re as good as a dead man.”

Rollison thought: “And he believes it.”

Rollison could believe it, too.

There were still the knives, one clasped with a steel band round his right forearm, the other round his left calf; it was not the first time that those hidden weapons had stood between him and disaster. If he could shift the one on his arm so that he could grip it, one thrust would settle Wallis, and the men upstairs would not expect to see him appear, with or without a knife.

“Let me tell you something,” Wallis said. “You’re one of the best-known men in London. I’ve made quite a study of you. So’ve a lot of other people. There isn’t anything important about you that we don’t know.”

He was on the bottom step now. The inches beneath him made him seem enormous, and helped him to tower over the Toff. He was still beyond striking distance, although one lunge would bring him within it. Rollison began to flex the muscles of his right arm to work the clasp down. He had done this a dozen times before, and it was almost possible to guarantee that within fifteen or twenty seconds the knife handle would rest against the palm of his hand.

He could feel it coming down; feel the wooden handle on his flesh, the cold blade also.

Wallis sneered: “You can’t get away with a thing,” and as he said that, there was a swift movement behind Rollison, hands gripped him, two men appeared from the dark void. One held his right arm outwards while the other pulled back the sleeve.

There was the knife.

Now get the one off his leg,” Wallis said. He stared at Rollison with his eyes glittering, in his way a handsome devil.

But the key word for Wallis was powerful. A man pulled up Rollison’s trouser leg, and found the knife.

“You can keep them as a souvenir,” Wallis told them. “Take him in the cellar.”

One man switched on a light which came from an unshaded electric bulb hanging from the ceiling of the cellar. Beneath a small coal hole, or iron grid, was a heap of coal for the fires; there were also two or three cans of petrol and paraffin, explaining the oily smell, and some wooden boxes piled on top of one another. Several of these boxes had printing on them but Rollison did not notice the word Jepson on any.

Along one wall was a bench with a few tools on it, including a cobbler’s last and some rubbery soles and heels. On another side was a similar bench, thick with cobwebs and dust. An electric train set stood on this, the rails loosely fitted, the train itself half covered with a piece of cloth.

The two men stayed behind Rollison.

The worst thing was that he did not know what Wallis would do; every moment was an ordeal by waiting. He could see hatred in the man’s eyes, could even understand it. What he could not understand was the delay: did Wallis realise that every second of delay was torture, worse in some ways than an attack itself ?

At least Rollison was standing on his own two feet, and no longer swaying. The light shining upon Wallis’s face cast shadows which made the man look horrific. That might be intended to add to the menace, but in a queer way it struck Rollison as funny; the overloading of a situation, so that the sinister could become almost ludicrous. It was not so marked as that, but it eased Rollison’s tension slightly. If Wallis had intended to attack as he had attacked so many others would he have waited? None of the stories of what had happened suggested that he would.

Why the delay?

“You’ve seen some friends of mine,” Wallis said, with sardonic humour. “Any of them talk?”

“None of them talked,” Rollison answered. “Some of them talked,” said Wallis. “I was just asking a rhetorical question. Rickett talk?” Rhetorical was a good word for Wallis. “Nobody talked,” Rollison insisted.

“They name me?”

“I named you, and they wouldn’t confirm or deny it. That was good enough for me, but it wouldn’t be any good in court.”

“No one’s ever going to get me into court,” Wallis said. “You’re lying. Rickett talked. Rickett told you about Bishopps. You want to know how I found that out? I talked to Bert Smith. The only question you asked was whether he did any work for Bishopps. Think that was smart, Rollison? Because I don’t. It proves to me how much wind you are. If you’d been smart you’d have asked a dozen questions.”

Rollison saw the magnitude of that mistake, and prayed that Ebbutt had sent help to Rickett quickly. He had been too keyed up, too viciously angry about what had been done to Jolly, and emotion had overcome logic.

“All right,” he said, “it wasn’t smart.”

“You aren’t so good at anything,” Wallis sneered. “How much do you know about Bishopps?”

“All I know is that everyone except Jones and the Blakes had some association with them,” Rollison said.

“What else?”

“What else is there?”

“There is another thing,” Wallis said heavily.

“You may as well talk.”

Rollison said abruptly: “There’s no other thing, Wallis, and I’ve talked enough.”

Wallis could have struck at him then, and actually fondled the knuckle duster on his right fist, but he did not strike. The cellar was quiet but for the breathing of the four men, although there were sounds from outside: not loud, all muffled but unmistakable. There were people walking, and now and again an extra clang on the iron cover of the coal hole told of someone who actually stepped on to it. Now and again, also a car horn sounded in a strangely subdued note. There was no sound of voices, but the little noise that did come through made Rollison wonder what would happen if he shouted.

They would only let him shout once.

Wallis did not attempt to strike him, and now one thing was clear; he was after information. He would count on the unspoken threat, the fondling of that brass weapon, the presence of the two men behind, to break down Rollison’s resistance and refusal to answer questions.

It was clear now that he was no kind of fool, and could think for himself; but it wasn’t yet clear what information he wanted.

He said: “Rollison, I don’t have to tell you what I can do for you, and I don’t have to tell you I don’t like your face. I’d prefer to see it looking different. Just now I told you I don’t intend to let you go, and that still goes with me. But a lot of things can happen between now and the time you die, and that’s up to you.”