John Creasey - The Toff and The Lady

“Oh, they don’t matter,” said Keller, squeaking. “They’re facts—you can find them on the City page of any newspaper.

The other” he pursed his thin lips. “Are you from the family, by any chance?”

“They don’t know I’m here,” said Rollison.

“Hmm. Well, to tell you the truth,” said Keller, confidentially, “I got a little bit tiddly last night. Not a thing I do often,” he added, hastily. “I shot a line or two about the Barrington-Ley business, and a fat little chap who was in the “Chameleon” got my ear. Breathed deep, dark secrets. Barrington-Ley missing from home, family greatly worried, you know the kind of thing. I checked here and there—telephoned his country home and the London house, got evasive replies, and it all seemed to tie up. The truth is,” said Keller, a little sadly, “I ought to stick to the City. I always go outside when I’ve had one or two—subconscious longing, I suppose, I used to think I would make a good reporter. Er—seriously, will there

be trouble?”

“If I were you I would build a good defence,” said Rollison.

“Oh, I will. I will! It’s a good thing you warned me, or I would have forgotten it,” said Keller. “I wish I could think of the fat fellow’s name. He did give it to me. Smith, I think.”

“Or Brown,” said Rollison, sardonically, “or, by a great stretch of the imagination, Pomeroy.”

“It wasn’t Pomeroy,” said Keller, decidedly. “Nice little chap, very soft voice, looked like a butler.”

“Pointed chin with bags of flesh on either side?” asked Rollison.

“That’s the man! Now I come to think of it,” said Keller, “he was a bit anxious that I should know the whole truth. Usually they ask for a fiver for the story, and we don’t say no. He just wanted to dispense information. I say, is Barrington-Ley missing?”

“I shouldn’t rely on it,” said Rollison. “You can’t recall the fat man’s name, I suppose. Was it Shayle?”

“No,” said Keller, firmly. “No, it was something more common-or-garden that that. Smith has it. Or, as you say, Brown. I am a damned fool!” he added, shrilly. “Still. forewarned and all that. Very nice of you to come. I’ll have a de-fence like reinforced concrete if the Old Man asks me about it —and he will, he always does if there’s anything the slightest bit wrong. I say, old chap,” he added, with a sly look, “you couldn’t give me a pillar or two for the defence, could you? It’s your market, you know.”

Rollison said: “What time did you put the story in?”

“Oh, half-past one or thereabouts, it missed the country editions. That’s a help, the Old Man’s gone north, I think. Or was that yesterday? Why?”

“There was an attempt to murder Miss Barrington-Ley before midnight,” said Rollison. “You could have heard rumours of that, but because you wouldn’t put in anything you couldn’t vouch for, you didn’t use that story. That would show perspicacity wouldn’t it?”

“I say, that’s pretty good!” said Keller, beaming. “Miss B.-L. was hurt, was she?”

Yes. And if you have a word with Teddy and send him over to Barrington House to make inquiries, it would round off your defence,” said Rollison. “Of course, that’s only a suggestion.”

Rollison left the office, not dissatisfied. Before his righteous outburst at Barrington House, Pomeroy had made sure that the newspapers knew of Barrington-Ley’s disappearance, which was a curious fact, to say the least. Here was confirmation, if it were wanted, that there was much more behind the story than Grice suspected.

Rollison went to Aldgate by taxi, then took a bus along the Mile End Road. The people and the traffic streamed by him, and he felt stirred by this contact with the East End, which to so many looked drab and to him looked so colourful. People whom he knew or had met passed him, not knowing he was there, little crooks mixing with men and women who were as strictly law-abiding as any in the country, bookmakers perpetually warring with the police, professional pick-pockets and bag-snatchers who spent half their time in prison and the other half trying to keep out, but who did not seem able to give up the game. Here they thrived, amiable little people for the most part, with their own code of honour and a suspicion and dislike of the police which ran side-by-side. Nine out of ten he passed would no more steal or pick pockets than commit murder, but when the police wanted information about this man or that, they were sphinx-like. In many ways a strange motley, with a mixture of all races, Jews and Gentiles shoulder to shoulder in a curious fraternizing which so often led to many people, all self-righteous, drawing the wrong conclusions.

He almost forgot Lila, Countess Hollern, and over-shot his stop, so that he had to walk back along the crowded pavements, with trams clattering past him and shopkeepers’ touts watching him hopefully, for the rich sometimes came to the East End to pick up “bargains”, and complained when they were disappointed. There were two sides to every bargain in the East End.

One thing was noticeable; no one seemed to recognize him.

At one time he could not have walked along this thoroughfare without being noticed, spoken to, nodded at, pointed out and certainly scowled at ferociously. It was a reflection on the rarity of his visits of late.

At last he reached Eddie Day’s public house, behind which there was a gymnasium, for Eddie Day, a large man now running to fat, had been a boxer in his youth and still loved the sport. Chopping blocks and coming champions were nursed under his benevolent wing. Those who could afford to pay for training paid, those who could not were trained all the same, and few failed to recompense Eddie Day when they began to earn money.

There were only three people in the public bar, and no one was behind it. The occupants looked up at Rollison, and as quickly looked away. All were strangers to him, and all were suspicious of a well-dressed man of Rollison’s appearance in the bar.

Then Eddie Day waddled behind the bar. His face was pale, his eyelids drooped, he looked tired—as he always did—and his little ears, delicate almost as a child’s were prominent only because he was nearly bald.

“Hallo, Eddie,” said Rollison.

Eddie looked up—and his little mouth gaped. He raised both hands, kept staring, then broke into a smile which seemed to double the size of his mouth, and brought his hands crashing down on the bar.

“Bless my ‘eart an’ soul, if it ain’t Mr. Ar! Well corlummee, if it ain’t Mr. Ar! Well, I never did!” He took Rollison’s hand in his vast fingers and squeezed it. “I never did!” he said, wheezing. “I thought you’d deserted us, Mr. Ar, ever since the curate business you ‘aven’t put your nose inside the place. Good boy, that parson, though I say.it myself—do you know what?”

“What?” asked Rollison, greatly pleased.

“My ole woman’s deserted the Army, an’ now she goes to church, that’s a fack. Proper looks dahn on them brass-blowing buglers, she do, and her uniform—she just won’t put it on. I bought ‘er a n’Ancient an’ Modern fer ‘er birfday, you know, one wiv music, and she was as prahd as punch of it, proper prahd. Gets a bit monotonous singing ‘ymns every night.” added Eddie Day, “but still, anythink for a quite life, I says.” He paused, and then burst out: “Now what am I a-thinking of, Mr. Ar—what’ll you ‘ave? The same?”

“The same.”

“Good old mild and bitter,” said Eddie, taking a glass. “I remember the first mild-and-bitter you ‘ad in my ‘ouse, Mr. Ar, same as if it was yesterday. “Ere, I’ll tell you what—come into the parlour and meet the ole woman again. She’ll be tickled to death to see you.” He wheezed in high good humour, and added: “You know the way!”

Sitting in the parlour at the back of the pub, Eddie Day regaled Rollison with the local gossip, hoped that he would soon be about more often, said that Mrs. Eddie would soon be in, and then, when he seemed too breathless to talk any more, he leaned forward and said with a broad wink:

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Ar?”

Rollison laughed. “You’re a deep old scoundrel. Eddie!”

“You didn’t fink I fought you’d come to say ‘ow are yer at this time o’ day, did yer?” asked Eddie, with a shake of his head. “I know better’n that. If you’d come for that you would ‘ave chose to-night, when all the boys is abaht. Anythink much?”

“I don’t yet know,” said Rollison. “There was a little fellow picked up by the police last night—or early this morning. Known to use a knife.”

“Larry Bingham,” said Eddie promptly, and scowled. “Nasty little piece o’ work, that Bingham. I wouldn’t raise a finger to ‘elp ‘im, Mr. Ar, an’ that’s the truth. “Ad a cut at a lady in the West End, didn’t ‘e?”

“So that’s reached you,” said Rollison.

“Cor strike a light, we don’t miss much!” said Eddie. “Friend o’ yours? The lady, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Dirty little tyke,” said Eddie, and then showed some alarm. “Larry, I means. Well. I dunno that I can ‘elp yer much, but

I do know this. He owed Malloy a pony. Usually does a job to pay off ‘is debts, Larry does, never got a penny to bless hisself wiv. You’d think a man would ‘ave the common to layoff the racket when it don’t show a divvy, wouldn’t you, Mr. Ar? I mean, I can understand a man keeping at the game if he’s making a good fing aht of it, although I don’t approve of it, mind you; I’m all for law and order. Malloy’s been very flush lately,” he added.

“Do you know whom Malloy’s working for?”

“No,” said Eddie. “He’s a close one, he is, but I’ll tell yer what—Percy Dann lives next door to Malloy, maybe he knows somethink. Should be in any time, ‘e always ‘as ‘is pint before dinner, Percy does. Just a minute, Mr. Ar, I’ll go an’ see if ‘e’s arrived.”

He came back in a few minutes, followed by a painfully thin and ugly man, with a despondent face and dreary brown eyes and an Adam’s apple which moved up and down above his choker. He wore an oily-looking cloth cap at the back of his head, and in his right hand he carried a pint glass.

Eddie said: “Got ‘im for yer, Mr. Ar!”

“Coo lumme, look-oo-it-is,” said Percy Dann, running the words together as if he could not utter them fast enough. “I-never-fought-I’d-live-ter-see-this-day Mister Ar. “Ow are yer?”

He extended a limp hand.

He let it drop into Rollison’s, and then gripped—and had Rollison not known that Percy Dann, for all his thinness, had remarkably powerful fingers, he would have been taken by surprise. Percy had spent several years in prison for using those remarkable fingers in order to pick locks, for he was double-jointed and had great dexterity as well as strength in them. He had since retired, and had succeeded in convincing the police that his only income now came from the little tobacconist’s shop in a side street leading from the Mile End Road.

“How’s Mrs. Dann?” asked Rollison, and Eddie gasped in dismay but could not prevent a five minutes’ discourse on the troubles of Mrs. Dann. She was not well. She had undergone two operations and the doctors didn’t know what they were doing; doctors, Percy Dann wouldn’t give a fiver for all the doctors in London; they had properly finished off his wife, they had, she was so weak she could hardly crawl about the shop. He began to go into some detail about the operations when Rollison asked him if he would have another.

“Why, sure, Mr. Ar,” said Percy, and finished his glass in a single gulp. “Same again, Eddie. I was saying”

“How’s Malloy getting on these days?” asked Rollison, quickly.

“Oh, ‘im,” said Percy, disparagingly. “I never did like that perisher an’ nor does the wife. Never will, neither. Why, lives next door to us, he does, an’ do you think ‘e made a single hinquiry about the wife when she ‘ad ‘er op.? Not ‘im. Didn’t trouble to hinquire once, not even when she come back.”

“How’s his business?” asked Rollison.

“Mighty suspicious, if you arst me,” said Percy darkly. “ ‘E’s got plenty of nickel, no questions asked. “E’d put Larry Bingham up ter that job larst night, if you arst me. Lot o’ coming and going there is, too. Why, if it ain’t Eddie wiv the goods,” he broke off, and did justice to the second pint, after wishing The Toff good luck.

“Who has come and gone?” asked Rollison, and before Percy could launch into a monologue, added: “Has there been a short, fat man who favours bright check suits?”

Percy looked at him shrewdly.

“Always on the mark, that’s Mr. Ar. You mean Ole Nosey.”

“Nosey?” repeated Rollison.

“S’right. I dunno “is name, but ‘e’s a reg’lar visitor, ‘as been for munce. Come along the road one day wiv a nose like a rear light—I remember it well because it was the day the wife come out, proper weak she was, but when she saw “is nose— laugh? She nearly died a’laughing! Said a man of “is age ought a know better than look through keyholes, she did; ‘e didn’t arf give ‘er a look. “Ad it for weeks, that nose. Well, a week, anyway.”

“How long ago was this?” asked Rollison.

“Matter o’ three or four weeks,” said Percy. “The wife’ll know, got a memory for dates, she “as. Tell yer what,” added Percy, lowering his voice. “Nosey was at Malloy’s last night, he was, and so was Larry Bingham. About eight o’clock, it was—what time did I get ‘ere, Eddie?”

“About eight,” said Eddie.

“Then it musta been a bit before,” said Percy, “I see them both, I did, I said to myself, they’re up to a bit o’ no good, they are. You can always tell. When Larry got knocked off, was I surprised? No, sir, you ask the wife. I told ‘er, I said to ‘er, there’ll be trouble, Liz, you mark my words, Larry’s been out-a work too long. No, I wasn’t surprised. Takes a lot to surprise me,” added Percy, darkly. “You’d be surprised at what I know—wouldn’t ‘e, Eddie?”

“S’right,” said Eddie.

“I take a man for what he is,” went on Percy, “never mind “is business so long as ‘e pays spot cash, no credit in my business, no more than there is in Eddie’s.” The thought amused him. “Well,” he said, when he had recovered, “does it ‘elp, Mr. Ar?”

“A great deal.” said Rollison, warmly. “Has Nosey been along this morning?”

“The wife never said so, and there ain’t much that misses the missus,” declared Percy, and went off into another paroxysm of laughter. “Malloy’s at ‘ome—” ad two telegrams, I can tell you that; I see the boy myself. If I knew what was in them telegrams,” added Percy, “I could tell you a lot, that’s a fact. Well I’d better get along, dinner’ll be waiting and the wife likes me to ‘ave it ‘or. Be seeing yer, Mr. Ar.”

“You’ll see me in ten minutes or so,” said Rollison, “I’m coming to have a word with Mr. Malloy.”

“Cor, lumme,” said Percy, “some people don’t arf like trouble, don’t they, Eddie? An’ some works fast, I will say that fer you, Mr. Ar, you don’t let the grass grow in the medder! Why don’t you come along o’ me, an’ meet the missus?”