Salute the Toff (10 page)

 

For a fraction of a second Jolly looked astounded. His lined face had an expression of acute wariness, and his left hand was close to his hip pocket. Then he saw and heard the Toff, and the wariness disappeared; his face became set.

“Good evening, sir,” said Jolly politely.

“Jolly! What the devil are you doing here?”

Jolly lifted one hand as if in self-defence.

“I am sorry to have unwittingly raised your hopes, sir, but I assure you that I had no idea that I would find you in the office. I have been to the flat, to find neither you nor a message. I thereupon did what I considered to be the safer course.”

“Less verbiage,” ordered the Toff.

“Very good sir. I have returned from Hampshire within the past hour, with information that might be of interest.”

From the other room Fay said: “Thank heavens for that!”

Jolly turned abruptly, and the Toff led him into the other office, and Jolly recovered, bowed, apologised for any fright which he may have caused the trio, and then went on to tell his story in a precise if somewhat pedantic fashion.

He had reached Allen Cottage, to find that the place was empty, and a ‘To Let, Furnished' notice attached to the front gate. Consequently he had obtained keys from the nearest house agent in Romsey. The cottage, a small one of five rooms, had been to let for some time; but Jolly had found conclusive evidence that it had recently been occupied.

There had been a smell of comparatively fresh tobacco-smoke in one room. In the kitchen it was possible to smell fat which had clearly been used for frying within the past twelve hours. A bed had been slept in, and there had been a number of cigarette-ends about, all of which had been somewhat carelessly disposed—some in the fireplace but many on the floor.

“We'll pass the carelessness of the illegal tenant,” said the Toff. “Have you any of the ends?”

“Of course, sir.” Jolly took a small envelope from his pocket and handed it to the Toff, who took out cigarette-ends contained in it while Jolly went on with his story.

In the hope that the unlawful tenant would return, he had stayed in or near the cottage for the rest of the day. He had seen no one, but towards dusk he had decided that he should with advantage search the place more thoroughly. And behind the bed which had been slept in, and was also still dishevelled, he had found an envelope screwed up and thrown carelessly away, with a note inside it which Jolly handed to the Toff.

Fay, Anthea and Jamie crowded him to read it.

Fay exclaimed sharply: “It's Draycott's writing!”

“That's reasonable evidence that he's been to Allen Cottage,” said the Toff thoughtfully, “and that he's a long way from dead. It's addressed to you!” He stopped, and then read:

 

“Dear Fay,

“You will find the key of my desk in an envelope in the front of the ‘For Sale' filing cabinet. Please open the desk, take out my ‘Private' file and send it to—”

 

There the letter stopped.

It was not dated, and it was not completed. It was screwed up as if Draycott had decided half-way through that it was useless to write it; and because of it Jolly had decided to lose no time at all in trying to get the file.

“And you were quite right,” said the Toff. “It's a pity the file is missing.”

Jolly stared.

“Indeed it is, sir. I had no idea—”

“You saw none of McNab's men outside, did you?”

“I was surprised by their absence, sir. I was, in fact, quite prepared for the need for a little evasion.”

“It isn't like McNab to miss the obvious or to do anything careless. And obviously Draycott might try to come back here.”

“Why, if he's safe in his Hampshire place?” asked Jamie.

“For the file,” said the Toff. “He wanted it, or he would not have started to write to Fay. It's clear that he decided a letter was neither wise nor safe, and decided to try to get the file himself. The fact that it's missing makes it possible he succeeded.”

“I wonder if he has,” exclaimed Fay. “And I wonder if he could have 'phoned when I was away from the office?”

“The staff would have told you,” said the Toff. When they reached Jamie's house the Toff saw Mr. Tibby Mendoz, small and wellknit, and very apologetic about his bang over the head. He assured the Toff – and – Fay – that it would not happen again, and said also that Bert had sent his, Tibby's, brother with him. Two others would relieve them at dawn.

“Rolly, you really think I need watching like this?” Fay asked.

“After tonight, don't you?”

“I—I suppose so. But why?”

“Lorne thinks you know where Jimmy is,” said Anthea.

“But can that be the only thing?”

“If you can think up another motive,” said the Toff, “let me know. Now I'm going. I've a feeling that we won't want to be tired in the morning.”

It was half past two when he reached Gresham Terrace. On the way, and for ten minutes while they were preparing for bed, Jolly went into further details about his trip, but he could offer no further information. He was a little uncertain as to his wisdom in returning, but he had telephoned twice and found the Toff away: he had considered that it was essential for him to try to get the private file, and had been guided by that. The Toff arranged for Jolly to make a third trip to Hampshire on the following morning.

“What kind of place is it, Jolly?”

“Most charming, sir.”

“And the furniture?”

“It could not be called ideal, but there is nothing which you would find disturbing, sir.”

“Is it any better than the cottages you inspected the day before?”

“It is superior to any, sir. In fact had I seen it the day before I would have obtained an option then. Instead I obtained one today, paying twenty-five pounds to represent the first month's rent and all agreement charges and other incidentals. The rent is twelve guineas a week, sir: it is moderate for the place. I trust,” called Jolly into a silence that was broken by the Toff getting into bed, “my action meets with your approval, sir?”

The Toff called back: “I am beginning to think the saying that no man is indispensable is all wrong. It meets with my full approval. And as far as we can tell, Draycott is using a cottage as a hiding-place which I have undertaken to rent through you.”

“You have the option, yes.”

“I see,” said the Toff. A minute afterwards he added sleepily: “I wonder what McNab will think when he finds out? And I wonder—oh, damn! I meant to ring the Yard about the absence of surveillance on Draycott's office.” The bed creaked again, and then Jolly heard the ‘ting' of the telephone. When a night-operator spoke from the Yard, McNab was not there, and Wilson was also off duty, but a Sergeant Kain was acting for them.

Kain, a large man and one of the old school, sceptical of Hendon College and its professed advantages, heard the Toff out and then said stolidly: “You're wrong sir. There are two men watching the offices. I stationed them there myself.”

“They didn't stop me going in,” said the Toff.

“Why should they, sir? They were watching for Draycott.”

The Toff agreed that was reasonable. He had done what he felt necessary, replaced the receiver and went to sleep.

He dreamed of Fay and Draycott, and Draycott was a peculiar mixture, in that fantasy, of Harvey's secretary, Ted Harrison, Jamie Fraser, and Chief Inspector McNab.

Next morning, he decided to see Phyllis Harvey first, and presented himself at the St. John's Wood house just after eleven o'clock.

A small car stood outside, but beyond giving it a cursory glance the Toff thought nothing of it. He pulled his Frazer-Nash behind it, rang the front-door bell, and was admitted by a middle-aged woman in maid's dress. She looked pale and harassed, and her eyes were lack-lustre and red-rimmed.

“Good morning,” said the Toff. “May I see Miss Harvey, please?”

The woman burst into tears.

It was so completely unexpected that the Toff could only stand and stare. But then he spoke sharply, and she dabbed an already damp handkerchief at her eyes, apologised, and said in a voice that was very unsteady: “She's—she's been taken away by the police, sir.”

“She's been
arrested?”

“Yes, yes, sir, that's it; a sweeter, lovelier lady there never was, and now she's been taken away!” More tears threatened, while the Toff stood at a loss. He decided to try to see Harvey, but his thoughts of Harvey faded when a door opened at the head of the stairs, and he heard a surly voice say: “It's a lot of nonsense, but it can't be helped. I'll call again, sir.”

The door closed, and Edward Harrison came hurrying down the stairs.

 

 

The Toff stood by the side of the maid, who was sniffing, while Harrison came hurrying down the stairs in a self-important manner which the Toff had once been able to tolerate, but which now irritated him. The cricketer was frowning, looking as if he carried all the troubles of the world on his shoulders, and his lanky frame was for once clad in a respectable-looking grey suit. His glasses were perched too far down the bridge of his nose, which may have accounted for the fact that he was within two yards of the Toff before he recognised him.

Harrison pulled up sharply.

For a moment, and only for a moment, he was off his balance. His mouth opened, and then shut tightly. Then he spoke sharply, and in a rather querulous, dissatisfied manner, that of a man for whom things were not running smoothly.

“Oh, it's you, is it?” he said. “What the deuce are you doing here? Aren't you satisfied with the havoc you've caused?”

“Did anyone ever tan your hide when you were young?” asked Rollison tartly.

Harrison glowered.

“I haven't any time for being smart with you.”

“I have grave doubts whether you will ever be smart with anyone,” said the Toff.

It looked as if Harrison would start a row.

It seemed to the Toff that he was very short on sleep, and that his nerves were not in good order.

Harrison changed his mind.

“All right,” he growled. “There's no need to get on your high horse. If you'd had the tousing I have in the last day or two you wouldn't be so sweet-tempered. What
are
you doing here, anyway?”

“I'd come for a talk with Miss Harvey.”

“You'd
what!”
Harrison barked. “Well, well. The great Rollison is outwitted by the police, is he? They arrested her without asking your permission. I thought you had them eating out of your hand.”

“You mix too much fancy with fact,” the Toff said. “Is Harvey in?”

“Yes, but he isn't likely to see you.”

“Well,” said the Toff, “I can at least try.”

He turned away from Harrison and went up the stairs, reached the landing and then the door from which Harrison had come. He tapped, perfunctorily, and opened it.

He saw Mortimer Harvey for the second time, and was affected most by the man's arrogant expression. Harvey was tall and well-built, and probably nearly sixty, although he looked younger. His hair was no more than iron grey, and his grey eyes were cold but not unattractive. His fresh-coloured skin had a suggestion of the open air, and his large but regular features – the mouth particularly large and yet well-shaped – combined to give the impression that he had neither time nor patience for lesser men.

He was sitting at a large wooden desk in a study lined with books. The carpet was thick, the oak panelling modern and expensive, and the general furnishings of the room were luxurious. There was a cigar in Harvey's right hand, and in his left a sheaf of papers. He was saying “Who's that?” as the Toff went in, and he frowned when the door opened.

“Who are you?”

“My name,” said the Toff, “is Rollison.”

He took a card from his pocket and laid it face upwards in front of Harvey. He stood quite still by the desk, and Harvey did not trouble to look at the card. His face lost a little of its high colour.

“Oh,” he said, and although his voice was mellow it had then a harsh, almost a threatening, note. “So you're Rollison. And you have the infernal impertinence to come here? Don't stay,
Mr.
Rollison. I am quite prepared to have you thrown out.”

The door opened again, and the Toff knew that it was Harrison, but he did not turn round.

“Wouldn't it be wise to think again?”

“No,” said Harvey harshly. “I've nothing to say to you that would make pleasant hearing. My God!” he added, and pushed his chair back and lifted a hand as if prepared to strike the Toff then. “I've half a mind to thrash you myself!”

“All of which is nonsense, and I think you know it. Come right in, Harrison, don't stand by the door. Now—” The Toff regarded Harvey coldly, as he sat on the edge of the desk. He appeared to take it for granted that he had every right to be there. “Are you suggesting that Miss Harvey's detention is due to me?”

“I know it is!”

“You've either been misled or you're lying,” said the Toff, and there was every intention in his mind to anger the other man. “Of the two, I'm inclined to think that the latter is the right solution.”

“Of all the infernal nerve!” exclaimed Harrison, who had lined himself alongside Harvey.

“Oh yes,” said the Toff, “I've a nerve all right. Sometimes when it's as well. I'm matched and nearly outmatched for nerve. I have seen your daughter twice, only once to speak to. I have not discussed my meeting with her with the police.”

“That's a lie!” snapped Harrison. “I know that you told them she could find Draycott if she wanted to.”

“Oh?” said the Toff, and he turned the word into a wealth of disbelief. “So you've been convincing Harvey that I'm the bad man of the piece, have you?”

“You know very well that's true.”

“There's neither time nor need for a lot of argument,” the Toff said. “Harvey, your wife was killed in my flat, when I was about to talk to her. I had hoped that I was in time to save her from further unpleasant experiences, and I am quite sure that I saved her life on one occasion. Does that interest you?”

Harvey said in a strained voice: “Nothing about my wife interests me. I had not seen her for some weeks.”

“Weeks?” asked the Toff, and sounded surprised. “That isn't long for—but that's hardly what I'm here for. Did you know Lorne?”

Harvey said: “I knew him as a
roué
and a rogue. I warned Myra” – he paused after using his wife's name, and went on in a harsher voice – “and I told her the inevitable consequences of consorting with him. She refused to take my advice.”

“When did you first meet Lorne?” asked the Toff.

“Some years ago.”

“As a business associate?”

“What is this? An inquisition?” demanded Harrison, and he was breathing heavily.

“You be quiet,” said the Toff, with a sharp authority. “Mr. Harvey, I would appreciate an answer. Whatever is happening, whatever personal anxieties the present affair may have caused you, they are incidental to a larger issue in which Lorne figures prominently. It is essential to know all about the man, particularly if your daughter is to be saved from even more distressing experiences than she has already suffered.” Harrison muttered, hardly above a whisper: “It's a lot of nonsense.”

Harvey said slowly, and with his eyes on the Toff: “I met Lorne some four years ago, in connection with a business transaction. Harrison introduced us.”

“Oh,” said the Toff very gently, and again: “Oh. You introduced Lorne, did you?” He glanced at Harrison, whose face was very pale. “I'd no idea that you had met before. You omitted to mention that at Manchester, didn't you? And afterwards?”

“There wasn't any need to. I'd discovered what a rogue he was, and I've had nothing to do with him for a year or more.”

It was possible that this was his best opportunity of telling Harrison about seeing him at Lorne's flat; but he let it pass.

“There are things the police would like to know from you, I think. We'll go to the Yard, Harrison.”

“I'm damned if I will!”

“You needn't be damned yet,” said the Toff. “Excuse us, Mr. Harvey.”

There followed one of those remarkable things of which the Toff was capable. He stepped to Harrison's side and gripped his forearm, and Harrison found that he had to move to escape the sharp pain that ran up his arm. Harvey was about to protest when the Toff reached the door, opened it, propelled Harrison quickly along the passage. Harrison was forced along at such a rate that he could not stop, while in the study Harvey was staring at the door.

The Toff took Harrison out of the front door and sat him with force into the Frazer-Nash. Harrison was rubbing at his arm and swearing under his breath, but made no attempt to get away. The Toff was pleased with that as he made for Westminster. In the St. John's Wood house Harvey kept staring at the desk. At last he picked up the Toff's card, and it was almost by accident that he turned it over. He saw the pencilled drawings of the top hat, the monocle and the swagger-cane, and he started; and then he stared at it fixedly, with the colour draining from his face.

The Toff pulled the Frazer-Nash up outside the Embankment gates of Scotland Yard and looked unpleasantly at Harrison.

“Well, are you going to tell your story?”

“I—I don't give a damn what I tell I” snapped Harrison. “I didn't have to tell you that I'd done business with Lorne, did I? You're taking a lot too much on yourself, Rollison. I—”

And then he struck at the Toff.

The blow that slid off the Toff's chin, for he was expecting it and he moved his head. But he pretended to be off his balance for a moment, and Harrison took his long legs over the side of the small car and ran for a taxi that was cruising past. He jumped in while it was moving, to the astonishment of several policemen and passers-by. And as the cab gathered speed the Toff smiled obscurely before turning into the Yard.

McNab was alone in the large office, and at the Toff's appearance he smiled widely. He also spoke with warmth, and stood up to pull a chair forward for the Toff.

“Well, well, Rolleeson! I'm glad ye've come—I was on the 'phone to ye only half an hour ago.”

“Nice of you,” said the Toff. “The idea, of course, was to tell me about Miss Harvey's arrest.”

“Well, to mention it,” said McNab, and beamed. “Ye've been slower than ye often are on this business, Rolleeson. Ye've been trying to put more than there was into it. Och, I'm not blaming ye—dinna think that for a moment. But from the first it was clear to me that Draycott had killed yon body at the flat and was in hiding. That's what happened, ye ken.”

“So? You've got Draycott?”

“I will have when his lassie talks.”

“And you're going to charge her as an accessory?”

“I think so,” said McNab. “Now, Rolleeson, dinna ye start getting fidgety, mon. I can see that ye're going to ask me where the murder of Myra Harvey comes in, but I've all that worked out. I can tell ye the whole story, if ye'll listen.”

“I'm listening,” said the Toff.

“Good! Well, now, it's like this. Harvey was being blackmailed because of the association of his wife with the man Lorne, ye ken. Draycott knew of it, and brought the blackmailer to his flat and killed him there. That made Draycott run, but he told the lassie where he would be. That's one part. The other is that Lorne was behind the blackmailing, Rolleeson. The blackmailer worked for him, and Harvey's wife learned of it. When ye took her away Lorne was afraid she would talk, and he sent the prisoner to make sure she didna. The prisoner made a mistake in trying where he did; we owe his capture to ye, Rolleeson, and I'm grateful. But when we've got Lorne and Draycott we'll have them all. It was complicated,” added McNab complacently, “but it works out. Can ye see anything the matter with the reasoning?”

“And you're really going to build your case on that?” The Toff asked incredulously.

“Of course I am.” McNab spoke sharply.

“There are times when you positively frighten me,” said the Toff. “And the worst trouble is,” he added, in his eyes an almost haunted look, “I don't see that I can prove you wrong just yet.”