John Creasey - The Toff And The Stolen Tresses

“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.