John Creasey: Stars For The Toff

“I don’t think so, sir. Intuition, perhaps.”

“No. Second sight.”

“If I have to give an opinion—no, sir, I don’t believe in them.” Jolly looked a little uneasy as he answered, frowning. “Is there some particular reason for these questions?”

“Yes.” Rollison moved across the large room, a combination of study and living-room, essentially a man’s with its massive leather chairs and its sporting prints, its lack of any sign of femininity. He picked up a newspaper, the Daily Globe , flipping over the pages until he came to a photograph of a dark, gypsylike woman with a shawl over her head and long, voluminous skirts. Her strange, almost hypnotic gaze stared up at him, absorbing all his attention, so that he scarcely noticed the young girl photographed beside her.

It was with a conscious effort that he at last wrenched his eyes from hers, and handed the newspaper to Jolly, who looked down at the photograph.

“And this is the reason, sir?”

Rollison nodded. “If you read the list of people this Madam Melinska is said to have swindled, you will see the august name of Lady Hurst. She—”

Jolly, appalled, cried out:

“Not Lady Hurst , sir?”

“No less.”

“But she can’t have been taken in by a charlatan!”

Rollison made no reply, and Jolly, after his first incredulous exclamation, studied the charges brought against the self-styled seer who called herself Madam Melinska. Convincing her clients of her ability to see into the future, she had, so the newspaper report read, persuaded them to give her certain sums of money for investment in a company known as Space Age Publishing, Limited. Of this money there was now no trace. The police had made the arrest; and Madam Melinska, it was said, would be in the West London Magistrates Court to face the charge this morning.

It was now ten minutes past nine.

“Are you going to the Court, sir?” inquired Jolly.

“Not unless I’m invited or instructed to,” said Rollison. “Have you read the small print?”

“Yes. That among the—ah—Melinska woman’s clients who have invested money has been Lady Hurst. Do you expect her to ask you to take an interest in the case?”

“Yes,” said Rollison. “I certainly—”

The telephone bell cut across his words. Rollison lifted his hand palm-outwards—an “after you” sign to Jolly, who took the receiver and answered in his quiet, modulated voice:

“This is Mr Rollison’s residence.” There was a momentary pause, then a look first of alarm, then of resignation, flitted across Jolly’s face. “Yes, my lady,” he said. “Mr Rollison is in.”

Rollison, surprised at the extent of his own satisfaction, took the telephone with one hand and with the other signalled to Jolly to stay where he was. Before speaking, he sat on the arm of a brown leather chair and stretched out his long legs.

“Good morning, Aunt,” he said, with mock deference.

“Richard.” This was Lady Hurst at her most autocratic. “I wish to see you.”

“Very well, Aunt,” said Rollison. “When?”

“In half an hour’s time.”

“I’m sorry—” began Rollison, but before he could go on, his protest was brushed aside in a torrent of command from his oldest surviving relative and the one member of his family for whom he had regard, affection and respect. This was a matter of great importance; he must drop everything else and give it priority. It was not often that his aunt requested a favour and on this occasion he must grant it.

“. . . so be here in half an hour’s time, Richard,” she ended, as if it would never occur to Rollison to insist on “no.”

“But Aunt Gloria—”

“Be here, Richard.”

“But Aunt Gloria!” cried Rollison, in convincing mock distress, “I can’t be both with you and at the West London Magistrates Court, can I?”

There was a curious sound at the other end of the telephone as if Lady Hurst had suddenly caught her breath. Jolly gave a wan smile and moved towards the domestic quarters, while Rollison winked at the Trophy Wall and pictured his aunt’s stern, deeply-lined face in his mind’s eye. He waited in the long silence, until Lady Hurst said in a very positive tone:

“So she was right.”

“Who was right and what was she right about?” demanded Rollison.

“Madam Melinska was right,” stated Lady Hurst flatly.

“Glory,” said Rollison in his most winsome voice, “you’re a darling, and the most generous and kindhearted darlings sometimes get taken for a ride. How much have you lost?”

“One thousand pounds,” answered Lady Hurst.

“You’ll survive,” Rollison said drily, “and why—”

“Be quiet, Richard!”

“Yes, Aunt.”

“And listen to me. I was not swindled. I am not a senile old woman who throws her money away on confidence tricksters. I have managed my financial affairs in my own way all my life and I have made a better job of it than you.”

“Yes, Aunt,” said Rollison again, now genuinely meek; certainly his speculations on the Stock Exchange, some years ago, had cost him dear.

“Madam Melinska,” began Lady Hurst, “is—” She paused, then went on with great vehemence— “is absolutely honest and trustworthy. She warned me that if I invested this thousand pounds I would probably be accused of criminal folly. I have been. She also told me that she would be accused of fraud. She has been. She told me that a tall, dark, handsome stranger—”

Rollison made a choking sound.

“—stranger, that is, to her ,” his aunt careered on, “would become interested in the charges before I made any attempt to enlist his help. She said that he would be a relation of mine—”

“But Aunt—”

“—and my only quarrel is with her use of the word “handsome,” continued Lady Hurst. “She meant, clearly, that you would take notice of these absurd charges very quickly. You have. She also said that, with your help, the money I had lost would be repaid to me, not once but three times over, but that this would not happen straight away and I must be prepared to wait.”

“Wait!” echoed Rollison hollowly. “My dear Aunt, you certainly must be prepared to wait. And wait a very long time. Surely you don’t believe you’ll ever see a penny of that money again?”

“I certainly do believe it,” said Lady Hurst sharply. “Everything else Madam Melinska said has come true. She told me you’d take an unsolicited interest in the case, and you have.”

Rollison sighed.

“But, Aunt, she could easily have known I’ve a reputation for poking my nose into other people’s business. And once she knew you had a nephew with my kind of reputation—”

He paused, hearing his aunt breathe heavily into the receiver, and steeled himself against whatever blast she was preparing. With great deliberation and in her deepest voice, she responded:

“Richard, you are both a cynic and a sceptic. I shall now prove that you are quite wrong about her, and that she does have some strange gift of seeing facts of which she can have no personal knowledge. Go to your Trophy Wall, and count the number of trophies on it.”

Rollison said faintly: “Yes, but—but why?”

“Go and count them!” his aunt thundered.

“I counted the trophies last night,” Rollison told her defensively. “Jolly and I were in a nostalgic mood.”

“Then you found, according to Madam Melinska, that there were forty-nine, and that today you are to begin your fiftieth investigation.” After a pause the old woman went on with a touch of anxiety in her voice: “Isn’t that true, Richard? This will be your fiftieth case?”