Here Comes the Toff (3 page)

Who, in London, was most likely to work with her?

Rollison could think of no one, for Master Crooks – he liked the capitals – were rare at all times, and just then, as far as he knew, completely non-existent.

The five minutes he had allotted for consideration being up, he donned his hat and coat again and went to the Carlton Club. By then it was well past midnight, but he was not surprised to find Sir Matthew Waterer, an old-middle-aged gentleman of considerable wealth, sitting in his favourite corner of the smoking-room, and holding forth – to the annoyance of most of his companions. Waterer was at that moment on his third favourite hobby-horse – the degeneracy of modern youth. It took Rollison five minutes to break in on his conversation – and thus earn the silent acclaim of a half circle of unwilling listeners – and another five to corner Waterer, and discuss his first favourite hobby-horse – Art.

The Toff, a patient man, had eight minutes of Art before he led the conversation to Renway. Immediately he gathered that Waterer disliked Renway, and assumed that Renway's collection of Italian paintings was superior to Waterer's. It was. If the latter gentleman was to be believed, however, not a single item of Renway's collection had been honestly come by. Rollison was silent for some moments in sheer admiration of a man who could so ruthlessly discard all common decency about a fellow-collector, and who held the laws of slander in such obvious contempt. Nevertheless, he had a clear picture of Renway in his mind.

A rich man – a man of few friends – a man with a nephew likely to inherit most of his fortune. A big-business man who did not know that it was past time he retired. A misogynist – Waterer rolled the word out with obvious enjoyment, and the Toff smiled, as he remembered using it on himself when he had been talking to Anthea – and yet a man who was thinking of getting married. Rumour had it that he was engaged.

The Toff raised a metaphorical eyebrow.

Waterer was short, florid, grey-haired, with a veined nose and a thick, rasping voice. He waved his right hand as he talked, and kept the other in his pocket. He fixed the Toff with protuberant, fish-like eyes.

“Yes, Rollison, at his age. Obscene, I consider it. Marriage is a thing for the young, and …”

“And who,” asked Rollison gently, “is the lucky lady?”

“A woman named Curtis, I'm told. Haven't thought much about it.” Waterer then proceeded to prove that he had made every inquiry possible short of a personal approach to Renway, and further described the lady as no better than a
demi-mondaine
. He did not use the word, but something far more crude. He admitted – not without a suggestion of lasciviousness – that she was good to look at, and his description of her fitted Irma Cardew.

Which suggested that Irma was either (a) seriously contemplating marriage, or (b) planning a large-scale fraud on the millionaire. The latter was the more likely.

It was nearly one o'clock when Rollison got home, to find Jolly waiting for him, with a report.

Jolly had reached the millionaire's St. John's Wood house ten minutes before Irma had come out, to be driven away by Renway's chauffeur. She had entered a flat near Park Lane, which spoke of money; discreet inquiries of the night porter had elicited the fact that she had been there for some weeks, that she was next door to a man named Kohn, and that she had a habit of staying at Kohn's flat at hours which were not considered proper.

And thus the Toff became interested in the man named Kohn, but not as interested as he would have been had he known a little more of Kohn's past life.

For Kohn was not an honest man.

 

 

Had there been no Jolly, Anthea would doubtless have been disappointed.

Which does not suggest that she was enamoured of Jolly, for, in fact, she considered him a vaguely interesting freak, and could not understand why the Toff bore with him. The Toff saw no reason to enlighten her on Jolly's usefulness, nor on the fact that he was one of the most astute men in London, that he had a flair for finding the flaws in the Toff's arguments – which was what the Toff wanted while theorizing on crime – and that he was familiar with the East End, the West End, the suburbs and even Greater London. Moreover, he was attached to him.

Rollison, however, was able to delegate certain important items concerning Renway and Irma to Jolly, and thus was free to spend the promised day with Anthea. He called for her at her parents' flat, to find his lordship out and her ladyship a little dubious about her daughter's friendship with the Hon. Richard Rollison.

In the course of a three-minute conversation the majestic and full-breasted woman who was Anthea's mother mentioned Jamie seven times, and as the Toff stood up on Anthea's arrival, he said,
sotto voce
:

“Believe me, Lady Munro, Anthea is safer with me than with Jamie. I shall deliver her back intact.”

“What,” demanded Anthea, as a footman closed the front door behind them, “did you say to mother? I've never seen her so flabbergasted in her life.”

Rollison crooked an eyebrow.

“I was warning her against Jamie, darling.”

“What?” Anthea was amused, yet puzzled.

“To divert her base suspicions from my own innocent head,” said Rollison. “Now let me look at you.” In the middle of Park Lane he stood and held Anthea at arms' length, seeing the soiled mackintosh, the stout and worn brogues, the shapeless hat. “You'll do,” he approved. “You may not look one of us to the gentlemen we're visiting, but certainly you won't look one of the nobs. At first glance, that is. You've a something, Anthea, which won't stay hid.”

“Thank you, sir. Where do we go first?”

“By bus to Aldgate Pump, and then we walk.”

“Good. I—but just a moment!” Anthea stopped, and held the Toff at arms' length, scowling. “
You're
dressed to kill.”

“The Toff always is,” said Rollison, cheerfully. “They'd be disappointed if he wasn't. Have you seen one of these?”

“These” were several visiting cards which, when they were on the bus, she examined with some care. They said quite simply that the Hon. Richard Rollison lived at Gresham Terrace, and was a member of the Carilon Club.

“What about them?”

“Turn over,” said Rollison.

On the reverse side of the cards were several pencil sketches, and Anthea started. She saw a top hat set at a rakish angle, a swagger cane, and a monocle, the string hanging down and tied at the end to the cane. They were absurd little drawings, and yet they conveyed the name perfectly.

The Toff …

“You are a fool! Why do you use them?”

“To frighten people,” said Rollison.

“I don't believe it.”

“Which doesn't mean it's not true. Those cards,” added the Toff somewhat self-consciously, half wishing that he had not brought them into display, “have an effect not unlike a grenade when put through the letter-box at the right moment. Which is quite enough of me – we're sight-seeing, remember.”

He took her to Wapping and the Hundred Arches; he took her to the Pool, and the hundreds of little alleyways leading from it. He showed her quaysides where murder had been committed; he showed her the bearded boatman who found bodies in the river frequently, and called them “deados”, and took them always to the Surrey side, because from the authorities there he received more payment than if he kept them on the Middlesex side. He showed her public houses which were the rendezvous of crooks, he pointed out pick-pockets, even one convicted murderer recently out after serving eleven years of a “life” sentence.

He led her through dingy, narrow streets where women foregathered at the front doors and talked and shouted, laughed and swore, with babies at their breasts as often as not – or so it seemed to Anthea. They passed the great post-war blocks of flats, tatty with washing drying on balconies, bleak in their tarmac surrounds. They saw whole districts where most of the occupants were hard-working citizens, where every member of every family contributed something to the family exchequer, and yet – because of high prices, and hire-purchase commitments – failed to have quite enough.

He showed her the Indian and Jamaican quarters, many still undeveloped, overgrown bombed lots, ruined houses, yet undemolished, notoriously used by the cheap prostitutes now run off the streets. He took her through an empty hovel which had once been a coiner's den, and showed her the relics of a broken plaster cast from which half-crowns and florins had been made.

She said very little, but she listened, and her eyes were bright with interest.

She was astonished by one thing.

Everywhere people seemed to know the Toff. He was smiled at, waved to, and talked to a dozen times. He had a pocketful of coppers and dispensed them among the smaller children, never making one jealous against another. There were, it was true, people who kept stoney-faced when he passed, others who swore: they were gentlemen, he assured her, who would gladly put a knife in his back.

He pointed out a gross, pot-bellied man with a scar on his right cheek, whose hair was cropped close, and whose discoloured teeth showed in a snarl as they passed.

Anthea, for the first time, looked perturbed.

“Ugh, what a brute! Who was he?”

“That's Dinger,” said the Toff off-handedly. “He's just come out after a sentence for bigamy.”

“Bigamy—that creature?”

“You haven't seen his wives,” said the Toff, and then, as casually: “He handled dope, too, and that was where we quarrelled. I was never able to pin it on to him, but that scar on his cheek was from my knife. We had a scrap in the dark; he wore knuckle-dusters and used a razor.”

Anthea shivered.

“Rolly—it's terribly dangerous. Why do you?”

“I don't quite know,” said the Toff, and that was the whole truth. “My dear, I'm getting hungry, and so are you. Shall we eat?”

She nodded, still thinking of Dinger, and the fight by night which Rollison had dismissed in a few words, but which had conjured up visions likely to keep her company at night.

She had wanted to see the East End, and he was showing it to her. Her reactions were better than he had anticipated, and yet he wondered whether a whole day would not be too long.

In a street near the Mile End Road he turned into a coffee shop. The benches – where half-a-dozen stevedores and several labourers and two slatternly women sat – were hard, with high backs separating one cubicle from the next. The bill of fare was chalked up on a slate hanging on the wall, thus:

 

Joint & 2 veg. 3/3d.

Pudding – 5d. Tea – 6d.

Steak & Kid. 3/6d.

Sausage & Mash – (1) 1/11d. (2) 2/3d.

 

A girl in a dirty apron, who looked no more than fourteen, waited for their order. Her greasy auburn hair could have been a delight, but was hanging in neglected strands. Coarse, friendly shouts hailed her from the benches.

“Come orn, Gert!”

“Watcher waitin' for—yer pension?”

“Never mind, 'Andsome, gimme me sawsidge.”

Anthea gave it up.

“Steak and kidney pudding twice, with vegetables,” ordered Rollison to Gert, and the girl flounced off, returning more quickly than seemed possible with two steaming platefuls.

“Good stuff,” said the Toff, his eyes gleaming. “Try it.”

It was good stuff, although the suet roll which followed was too sickly for Anthea, and the tea that came afterwards was thick and black and sugary. But there was a fascination for her about the coffee shop, the girl who looked so unkempt and young and yet exchanged backchat with the wit of a woman twice her age.

As the Toff started to get up, he paused, for a man in a spotlessly white apron, with a large flabby face and a long black moustache, came out from the kitchen.

“I thought it was you,” he said, and his hand went out for the Toff to grip. “'Ow's tricks, Mr. R? Not on the look-abaht, I 'ope.”

“Not at your shop, Sam, you're always reliable.”

Sam sniffed, eyeing Anthea curiously.

“Maybe, maybe not, Mr. R. Gits some rum customers 'ere sometimes. You 'eard anything?”

“No,” said the Toff.

“Irma's aht,” said Sam, in so low a voice that Anthea could not catch the words.

The Toff said gently: “Yes, I had heard that. Do you know where she is?”

“I bin wonderin',” said Sam. “Charlie Wray's the most likely fer 'er to visit, I reckon, 'e useter work fer 'er brother. If you 'as a smack at 'er, smack 'er 'ard, Mr. R. She ain't up to no good.”

“We think as one,” said the Toff. “I'll let you know if anything develops, Sam. Meanwhile, meet Miss Munro.”

Sam turned his long black moustache in the direction of Anthea, and with care wiped his hand on the inside of his apron before offering it to her. His grip was surprisingly firm. As he smiled she saw the roguish expression in his eyes, and realized for the first time that there was something attractive about him.

“
How
de do?” asked Sam, with considerable emphasis on the “H”. “
H
everything as yer liked it?”

“It was excellent,” said Anthea.

“That's the ticket. Sam's fer food wot fills yer, that's my motter.” He offered his hand again, even attempted something of a bow, and saw them to the door. As they went out of earshot, Anthea said: “There you are, you see. I
must
look a freak to them, Rolly.”

“Darling, those eyes of yours do it, and your voice. But don't worry about that, with Sam it was a sign of respect extended to all those whom I bring with me. It's a whispering shop.”

“A what?”

“A whispering shop. If anything's happening that the police don't know and want to, they try Sam's. He's not a squealer—a police informer—but if there's any really nasty stuff about he will whisper. Most of these people will give drug-traffickers away discreetly, and there aren't many who like the black.”

“The black what?”

“Oh, such innocence!” exclaimed the Toff, and squeezed her arm. “Blackmail, darling. The extorting of money by threats of the disclosure of unhappy incidents from a man or woman's past, or the unbaring of a skeleton in a reputable family's cupboard.”

“Thank you,” said Anthea coldly. “What was he talking to you about?”

“The woman in black whom we saw last night.”

Anthea whistled.

“Does it get round like that?”

“It does,” said Rollison. “Everything reaches the East End in time, and usually quick time. There are more knowledgeable people here than you wot of. And now, look at that pub on the corner.”

It was a dingy looking place with the woodwork green painted, but not recently, and many chalk marks along it, including a hammer and sickle, and, close by, both the lightning-streak-in-a-circle sign of British Fascism, and the not unsimilar cipher of “Ban the Bomb”. The windows of the pub were dirty, the doorstep wanted cleaning, and one glass panel was boarded up. The boards were new.

“A recent rough house at the Blue Dog,” said Rollison, and for the first time Anthea noticed a small hanging sign with a picture of a small terrier painted in blue.

“What kind of a place is it?”

“Incredibly low,” said Rollison, and Anthea fancied that he was not as carefree as he had been earlier in the day. He walked slowly past the Blue Dog as if he hoped someone would come out or go in.

Someone did.

A youngish man, with outmoded winkle-picker shoes and clothes of flashy cut, pushed open the swing doors of the saloon bar, and swaggered on to the pavement. As he stood there, another man came from the pub, a vast creature, so fat that it seemed impossible for him to get through the door. He was in shirtsleeves, and wearing a green baize apron.

“Sure, Sidey, sure, you'll git yer whack, don't you worry. 'E never …”

And then Anthea saw the expression on the fat man's face freeze, and he looked towards the Toff. Rollison appeared not to notice him, but Anthea was conscious of a shock, conscious of the fact that the sight of the Toff had affected the fat man in a way which seemed volcanic.

The flashily dressed one snapped: “'E'd better not come it, Charlie, I …”

And then he, too, saw the Toff.

Exactly the same thing happened. Furtive, thin and unpleasant features stiffened, and for a moment his month stayed open. And then he straightened his shoulders, and muttered something that Anthea did not catch. He marched off down the street without another word to Charlie, who turned into the Blue Dog with the door banging heavily behind him.

Anthea said:

“Rolly, they were scared of you.”

“Ye-es,” said the Toff, “and not entirely without reason, my dear. When two men look at me like that they've got heavy burdens on their consciences. Yes, things are moving, and in a way I'm not sorry.”

“Moving to what?”

“If I knew, they'd stop moving,” said the Toff. “One of the difficulties of dealing with bad men is that you don't know just what the bad men are being bad about. The gentleman in mauve is named Sidey, I think. Charlie Wray owns the pub, and it's one of the worst in London.” He smiled down at her, and there was in his expression a rollicking, devil-may-care insouciance which forced her to smile back. “Our next point of interest, lady, is a low dive frequented mostly by Chinatown. Don't laugh at Limehouse, my dear, Limehouse is not laughable—even under the Welfare State.”