The Toff and the Terrified Taxman Read online

  “I won’t pretend I enjoyed it much,” admitted Rollison.

  “It is quite remarkable that you escaped from the room, at all.”

  “Don’t ever let me be persuaded that my little gadgets like tear-gas cigarettes and a palm gun are melodramatic,” Rollison said feelingly. “They really work.” He finished the cream and juice at the bottom of his dish, then cut himself a small piece of Gouda. “As a reasonably dispassionate listener, Jolly, what do you make of all this?”

  Jolly stood with a cheeseboard in one hand and a cheese knife in the other. For the first time since the recorder had begun to play back Rollison studied Jolly’s face without being deeply preoccupied with his own thoughts. His man’s lips had a rim of white and his eyes were glassy.

  “I am not dispassionate at all, sir. I am extremely angry.”

  “I’m beginning to see that you are,” Rollison replied, half-smiling. “Try not to be.”

  “But I am, sir. To think such a thing could happen to a man whose only concern is the good of others is sickening. Quite sickening. And unjust.”

  “We don’t live in a just world,” Rollison murmured, “and I have more of its goods than most.”

  There was defiance in Jolly’s eyes, in spite of his philosophical attitude, and for a moment it looked as if he were going to vent some of his anger on the Toff. He made a palpable effort to retain his self-control, breathed very deeply, and inclined his head.

  “I shall get the coffee, sir,” he stated firmly, and turned towards the kitchen.

  A smile hovered on Rollison’s lips as he watched his man, but it slowly faded. He knew how Jolly felt, and knew also that Jolly was always most vulnerable to ridicule. He could accept the facts of danger, of routine, of scoffing from the Press sometimes and of disapproval and rebuke from the police. None of these things had more than a fleeting effect. But if anyone attempted to make a fool of the Toff, that went very deep indeed.

  The telephone bell rang.

  Rollison got up immediately, and stepped down from the dining access to the telephone on the big desk. As he picked up the receiver he heard Jolly announce formally. “This is the residence of the Honourable Richard Rollison.”

  Immediately the response came: “And is the Honourable Richard Rollison in his residence?”

  It was Kimber. A sharp intake of Jolly’s breath told Rollison that the note of mockery in the voice had betrayed his identity, and this would be a great test of Jolly’s power of recovery. The pause which followed was a long one; Jolly was fighting for his self-control. At last he replied quietly enough to show how he had won this struggle.

  “I will find out, sir. Who is speaking, please?”

  “One Mr. Adrian Victor Kimber,” answered Kimber in a tone suggesting he meant to burst every vestige of Jolly’s self-control.

  “One moment, sir.” Jolly put the receiver on the table and a moment later appeared in the big room, where Rollison was now sitting on a corner of the table, holding the mouthpiece against the palm of his hand. “What do you wish to do, sir?” he asked.

  “I’d better find out what he wants,” Rollison said. “Go back and tell him so, will you?” He put the receiver to his ear and waited until Jolly told Kimber: “Mr. Rollison will be on the line in a moment, sir,” then spoke in a casual voice: “Yes, Mr. Kimber?”

  Kimber was startled enough by the matter-of-factness to ask: “Is that Rollison?”

  “Yes. Or if you prefer it, the Crusading Toff. What can I do for you?”

  “Surely—surely you’ve heard that tape!”

  “I’ve just finished listening to it,” Rollison said. “It’s a very accurate rendition.”

  “Don’t you know what it means?”

  “I think I know what you think it means,” Rollison said briskly. “That it makes me look all kinds of a fool and so holds me up to ridicule that you can use as blackmail. But you can’t. Offer it to any television or radio company, do whatever you like with it and whenever you like. It won’t worry me, Mr. Kimber. And I don’t think it will worry the police, except to check the things I accused you of. Where are you speaking from?”

  “I’m at—” began Kimber, then broke off and caught his breath. He muttered what sounded like: “You cunning swine,” and then banged down the receiver. Rollison put his down more slowly, and he heard Jolly’s go, too. He sat swinging his leg until Jolly came in, also smiling and in a very much better mood.

  “My congratulations, sir,” he murmured.

  “Thank you, Jolly. What did you make of him?”

  “There is little doubt that he thought you would not want the tape heard by anyone else, sir, and that he expected to use it so as to exert influence over you. He now knows that it won’t serve that purpose.” Jolly paused, frowned again, and went on: “Presumably you will have to let Mr. Grice hear it.”

  “Yes,” agreed Rollison. ‘Yes indeed. But unless he turns up again tonight, I think I’ll sleep on it. I imagine the police have more than enough to do, and I could do with—”

  He broke off, in sudden and fierce alarm, and shot an almost despairing glance at the electric star-shaped clock set in the wall on one side of the fireplace. He slid off the desk at the same time, and went on in a helpless-sounding voice: “It’s half-past ten. I’m an hour late for Ding Dong Bell already, Jolly. Find out if he’s on the telephone and tell him I’m on my way, will you?” He hurried out to his room to change back into the clothes he had worn at Kimber’s, angry with himself for having forgotten. There were all kinds of reasons and excuses but none made him forgive himself for such an oversight. He set great store on the outcome of the relationship with Bell, and he should never have allowed anything to get in the way.

  When he reached the big room again, Jolly was putting down the receiver.

  “I’m afraid there is no answer, sir.”

  “With luck, he’s gone to the Blue Dog,” said the Toff. “Call Bill Ebbutt and tell him I’m coming and ask him to stand by and pick up the pieces.”

  Chapter 15

  The Blue Dog

  In the later days of the Industrial Revolution, when industry, and trade were expanding as fast as the British Empire, a vast extension of London docks had been followed by the building of tens of thousands of tiny houses, little more than hovels stuck together in long terraces. Each front door opened on to the street. Each house had a tiny ‘garden’ now usually a path of concrete or hard gravel, at the back. Most were served by alleys at the back with wooden doors leading into each yard. Dotted about this great mass of tiny buildings, each of which often housed six, eight, sometimes even ten human beings, were public houses and churches. The pubs had mostly been put up to catch the trade as more and more people moved to London’s East End, the churches had come afterwards. One of the originals had been the Salvation Army Citadel.

  Not far from the Whitechapel Citadel was the Blue Dog. This lay behind the Whitechapel Road, near the docks. Now over a hundred years old, it was as resplendent in blue and white paint today as it had ever been. The inn sign, of a blue dog sitting and looking up at an invisible master, was London-famous.

  So was its owner – Bill Ebbutt.

  Unlike most of the nearby public houses, the Blue Dog was a ‘free’ house, which meant simply that it was not tied to any particular brewery but could stock whatever beers it chose. One small East End brewery manufactured 4X, 3X and 2X for the exclusive use of the Blue Dog. The 4X was a kind of Thameside Guinness, considered by many to be a great source of strength, a tonic in time of anaemia, a lift at times of work-fatigue and – it was often whispered – even possessing aphrodisiac qualities. Possibly that was why it was most in demand on Friday and Saturday nights.

  There were four main bars: the public, the saloon, the cocktail – a new addition – and the ‘private’. The biggest of these was the public bar, where
there was standing room only on a thickly sawdusted floor. The atmosphere here was still dark, mostly from the blue smoke of limp-looking hand-rolled cigarettes made from pungent-smelling shag. These were still called coffin nails. To meet both the demand and increasing laziness of many people, Bill Ebbutt had big stocks of these wrapped in rolls often held together by a limp rubber band. These were rolled by old cronies of the landlord, in the Gymnasium. This home of many a boxing hope was built round the corner from the Blue Dog, and greatly patronised by old fight fans, old pros, and many a young hopeful. Ebbutt paid for this work in beer and, when necessary, a snack from the public bar, for contrary to the general concept of the Welfare State many people in the East End of London could be hungry too much of the time. Ebbutt also helped to run youth clubs, clubs for old people, work-at-home projects and other businesses largely financed by Richard Rollison.

  With the mass of London docks on one side, with waterways and docks and locks and basins spreading half-a-mile or more from the river’s edge, and with one of London’s main arteries to the East on the other, this particular part of London was like a wedge, starting where the Whitechapel and Commercial Roads forked. Huge warehouses, cinemas and shops, lined the main streets. While much of the area, including forbidding Wapping High Street, was exactly as it had been for a hundred years, the warehouses, rising like huge prisons with walls at least as thick, were much newer. Huge patches of the terraced hovels had been blasted out of existence by Nazi bombers, still more had gone the way of slum clearance and huge new estates of bigger and better houses, high-rise and low-rise apartment blocks, had sliced through the terraces.

  Few of these were near the Blue Dog. In fact the pub and the Gymnasium were on a kind of island, the tallest buildings for a long way around, the centre of a web of old original Industrial Revolution hovels. All these roads led to the Blue Dog.

  In two of the small terraced houses, with a communicating door in between, lived William ‘Ding Dong’ Bell. In one, both of his daughters had been born and reared. And past these houses, known as 25, Quaker Street, drove the Toff about eleven o’clock that evening. At one corner was an old chapel, or Friends’ Meeting House, long since deserted by the Quakers who had moved to larger meeting houses not far away. One section of this old chapel was now used by a printer who set his own type and treadled his single flat-bed machine and did a thriving business in wedding cards, dance tickets, even tickets for ‘A Night of Fair Fights’ at Ebbutt’s gym, every Thursday of the year.

  Rollison, for a reason he himself did not fully understand, had come in his Bentley. It was perhaps a gesture of defiance, intended to prove beyond all doubt that Kimber had not weakened his nerve. The car was a pale blue Continental, not new but obviously well-beloved. It glistened beneath the streetlamps, which were still of gently hissing gas. The door of Number 25 was closed, but he pulled up outside it. He knew that at every other front window, both on street level and the first floor, there were faces; and that many a rat-tat-tat on common walls had alerted neighbours to go and see, and many a small child was despatched through the gates or over the garden walls to alert neighbours.

  It was the East End’s form of the tom-tom; a grapevine which had been growing for a hundred years. In the beginning it had simply meant ‘The cops!’ but of recent years it had come to mean many things, by no means least ‘The Toff!’ So hundreds watched as he got out of the Bentley and approached Number 25, and hundreds heard him knock.

  There was no answer.

  He tried again but no one came; Ding Dong and his Daisy were out, probably at the Blue Dog. What had happened to Violet, Rollison wondered, on the night of the day that her sister had died? He saw a dozen small boys in the shadows, and the bolder householders opened their front doors. No one spoke. Rollison got into the car and closed the door – and something clanged against the body; a stone hurled from nearby. Another struck a wing, yet another the glass of the rear panel, but he shot the car forward and was soon out of range.

  He didn’t like what had happened. Apart from the damage to the car, there was possibility that the stone-throwers had been bribed. Who else but Kimber would have arranged it? He turned two corners and parked outside Ebbutt’s Gymnasium. Lights showed at windows and doors, a few elderly men sat on wooden benches, and most stood up when the Bentley arrived.

  Men called out: “Good to see you, Mr. R.!”

  “’Ow’s the Toff tonight?”

  “Wotcher, me old Charley!”

  “Keep an eye on the carriage for me,” Rollison pleaded as he climbed out; and there was a chorus of promises, while more men came from the Gymnasium itself, calling out greetings. They would watch the car and deal short shrift to any youngsters who threatened damage.

  He walked to the corner and then to the Blue Dog, at the next.

  It was not dark, but poorly lit. Two or three of the gas mantles had burned themselves out and the small floodlight which usually illuminated the Blue Dog sign was out. And round here it was chilly, with an east wind. Up and down the road were parked cars, mostly small; a few lights glowed at the front windows, but mostly it was gloomy and quiet – until Rollison pushed open the door of the public bar. There was in fact a small light and sound trap but as the inner door opened there was a babble of voices, an assault on Rollison’s ears, and bright fluorescent lighting assaulted his eyes. There were perhaps forty people here, mostly men, and each seemed able to talk and drink at the same time.

  Three barmen were busy at the old-fashioned wooden handles, which looked like truncheons standing on end. One of them glanced up, saw Rollison and jerked his head towards the left, to a doorway which led from the public to the saloon bar. The nod presumably meant that Bill Ebbutt was there, and, observed by a few but accosted by none, he went through.

  Ebbutt, massively pear-shaped, was behind the bar.

  Ding Dong Bell, Mrs. Daisy beside him, was at a table in a corner. There were a dozen or so people in the room but Rollison was aware only of Ebbutt, briefly, and of the Bells. He called: “Hallo, Bill,” and heard Ebbutt’s wheezy: “Evening, Mr. R.,” and then crossed to the Bells.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “I was held up.”

  “I like a man of his word,” Bell said, without getting up. “Anyway what I wanted to tell you won’t do any good, now. The damage is done, Toff. You made a bloody fool of yourself.”

  He stopped.

  And a moment later, into an uncomfortable silence, came the sound of Kimber’s voice, on the tape: and it forced everyone to silence as it went on and on. The door to the public bar opened, and men appeared, to listen; where there had been a babble of noise there was silence except for the voices on the tape.

  They were threatening voices.

  Tempting voices.

  Mocking voices.

  Seductive voices.

  Five different voices, each distinct from the others.

  When it reached the spot where the girls had called to him to take them to bed, there was a guffaw of laughter from the public bar, followed by another, more raucous. Across it and across the voices on the tape came Ding Dong Bell’s voice: “Keep your mouths shut! I want to hear the rest again, if you don’t.”

  Silence fell. Everyone was staring at the Toff and listening intently. Ding Dong Bell was smiling faintly. Ebbutt was looking ill at ease. Someone out of sight sniggered: “Even the Toff couldn’t take five, one after another.”

  “That’s not the point,” another man called. “Could they take him, Charley?”

  Now, barkeepers were moving about the room, looking under tables, trying to find out where the recorder was. Two peered underneath Bell’s table, two others behind the curtains, then one of them discovered it. No larger than a box of matches it was stuck to the side of a quart bottle of 4X. He stretched out his hand for the bottle, which was within arm’s reach of Ding Dong Bell, who was staring at
the Toff.

  “Don’t touch it,” Rollison called. “Don’t spoil their fun, Dave.”

  ‘Dave’ was the barman near the tape-recorder; a wizened man. He drew back and glared round at Ebbutt for instructions. Ebbutt shrugged his big shoulders, and Dave moved back to the bar and the voices went on and on, the laughter and the mockery.

  Suddenly, Rollison realised that the part in which he had so roundly accused Kimber had been cut from this tape. So had other parts which could have shown him in good light. Someone laughed, and another sneered: “A lot of bloody good the Toff is, these days.” And suddenly, as the tape died away, a man threw a bottle across the room and it missed Rollison’s head by inches and smashed against the wall.

  “That’s enough!” roared Ebbutt.

  But the atmosphere here was suddenly dangerous. More bottles flew, one of them close to Ebbutt. When he ducked it smashed bottles of whisky and gin and other spirits on the shelves behind him. The door from the other side, the dockers’ bar, suddenly opened and more bottles were hurled – and a knife flashed within six inches of the Toff’s face.

  Bell grabbed his wife’s arm and rasped: “Come on!” and he dragged her towards the door.

  Rollison called: “I’m sorry, Bill.”

  He took out the cigarette case and tossed cigarettes about just as he had at Kimber’s house. Suddenly the rooms were filled with coughing, gasping men and women; and the first to suffer, for he was asthmatic, was Bill Ebbutt. He disappeared, coughing helplessly. Rollison fended off one bottle and then another but for the moment the danger was over, the men were helpless as they wiped their eyes and staggered about.

  The Toff moved towards the door to the street; and as he reached it, all the lights went out in the Blue Dog.

  At least six people were trying to get into the street when Rollison reached the door. Fresh air was sharp against his nostrils and his lips, but he was better off than any of the others and moved quickly towards the nearest corner, then to the other side of the street. He stood there dabbing at his eyes and watching as the patrons of the Blue Dog came streaming out of the two main doors, most of them coughing, one or two retching as if violently ill. A car slowed down as people ran blindly into the street. Another car roared up, and suddenly Rollison was touched with panic. Kimber killed with cars! Headlights blazed, shining on dozens of people, men and women, on a dog held on a leash. Brakes screeched. A car veered towards Rollison, and the only chance he had was to climb up over a doorway, a shallow porch of which jutted out. He stretched up and hauled himself on to the porch. The car slewed round, passed the doorway by inches, and sped towards the corner.