The Toff and the Great Illusion Read online

  “I am busee,” called a woman from beyond the hatch. “Why do you call me, Shoe?” She pronounced it ‘Show’.

  “Mr. Ar, Mr. Ar, Mr. Ar!” cried Joe, “bless me black heart, ain’t it good ter see yer! Fi! It’s Mr. Ar!” He gripped the Toff ’s elbow and led him towards the hatch; the door opened quickly, and Fifi appeared, short and fat, with magnificent dark hair sternly confined in a net, full lips muttering a French imprecation under her breath. Then she saw Rollison; the frown faded, her eyes gleamed and she held her arms wide.

  “Shoe, imbecile, why did you not tell me! M’sieu Roll’son, this ees a delight, a delight! Well! ’Ow long ees eet? Two years, yes, all of two years. You are not dead, no? Bien! M’sieu, you ’ave chose the night of nights. Fish! Such a piece of ’alibut you ’ave not tasted since you last come here, no? Shoe! Take M’sieu Rollison into the othair room, ’urry ’ury. Soon we close, M’sieu, then you tell us everything hein?”

  “Fifi, you’re prettier than ever,” said Rollison, and was rewarded by a delighted clucking as Fifi hurried to finish serving the last of the meals in the restaurant, and Joe took Rollison into the small private room. There he bent down, grunting as he unlocked a small cupboard and brought out a bottle of pernod.

  They sipped and talked for twenty minutes, while Fifi’s voice could be heard in the outer room – apparently she was sending a girl to collect the plates and start the washing-up. There was a smell of grilling fish, an insidious, gratifying odour.

  After pouring Rollison another drink, Joe began to set the table; silver glistened and damask shone, for he had spent a long time as a waiter in the West End. The little room, its walls covered with photographs and cheap prints, ornaments in every available space, a small harmonium against one wall, a sofa and six upholstered chairs, seemed to grow more spacious. Joe hovered about as if he were waiting upon royalty, chattering freely.

  Fifi entered, bearing a tureen; she sat with them while they had soup, then hurried to finish serving the fish. Her face grew redder and her voice more shrill, but there was triumph in her eyes when she presented the piece de resistance. It was a triumph.

  The conversation might have surprised Rollison’s friends at the Carillon and elsewhere, but it did not flag. Rollison learned what had happened, to a hundred acquaintances in the East End, heard of the death of a man here, a woman there, of numerous younger men in one or other of the theatres of revolt and revolution; he felt warmed and contented, almost forgetful of the purpose of his call.

  Fifi and Joe whipped, the dirty dishes from the table, and Fifi returned with coffee and brandy. She switched on an electric fire and set the bowl-shaped glasses before it to warm, then sat down, put her elbows on the table, and beamed.

  “Eet ees a delight,” she repeated, “but, m’sieu, you are a busee man, you come for some reason, hein?”

  “See ’ere, Fi,” protested Joe, “Mr. Ar don’t want—”

  “Imbecile!” Fifi exclaimed. “‘Ave you not the eyes? I ’ave seen M’sieu Roll’son thinking, but not about Fifi and Shoe all the time. Is that not so, m’sieu?”

  Rollison tapped the ash from a Sobranie cigarette, and said easily: “Yes, Fifi, there’s something on my mind.”

  “You see?” Fifi waved her hands expressively. “M’sieu Rollison, ’e does not come to waste ze time of ’ard-working folk or ’is own time. For some reason ’e come. M’sieu, speak, please!”

  Joe was making frantic efforts to catch Rollison’s eye, making it clear that he knew Rollison wanted to talk to him in confidence and that he understood Fifi might be de trop.

  “Stop it, Shoe!” snapped Fifi, with some annoyance. “I am a grown woman, I do not need to go in the comer. Eh, m’sieu?”

  “Now listen—” began Joe.

  “I don’t know that there’s anything very much,” said Rollison, leaning back in his chair and raising one eyebrow slightly. “Do you remember, Joe, seven or eight years ago, when you had a waitress named—”

  “’Ilda!” exclaimed Fifi.

  “Yes, that’s right.” Rollison was genuinely surprised. “I’d forgotten her name, but—”

  He did not want to frighten them, and knew that they might be alarmed by mention of Charmion. He had come because the waitress, Hilda – at the time of the trial a girl of seventeen of a startling beauty – had been one of his chief witnesses against Charmion. Had he been asked why he was anxious now to find out what he could of Hilda, he would have found it difficult to answer; but he did not find it hard to read the expressions on the faces of Fifi and Joe.

  Their smiles had gone.

  Fifi’s face grew hard, her expression baleful. Joe rubbed his clean-shaven upper-lip slowly, and stared at Rollison from narrowed eyes. The warmth of the party had faded, memory of the meal vanished, the waiting brandy glasses were forgotten. A cold wind seemed to creep into the room, affecting them all.

  “So,” said Fifi, shrugging. “Eet ees not my image, Shoe.”

  “O’ course it is,” declared Joe, sending another appealing glance towards Rollison. “You’ve got an imagination something chronic. Mr. Ar, don’t you take no notice of—”

  “Are we all fools?” cried Fifi. “’Ere, we are worried for ’ow long? Three, four weeks, about poor Hilda. Then M’sieu Roll’son come and inquire of ’er. That is two and two, ees it not? Do not try to ‘oodblind me, Shoe. M’sieu, what ees eet you know of Hilda?”

  “Nothing,” said Rollison. “I came to find out what you know about her.”

  “There!” exclaimed Joe, his eyes brightening. “It’s just becorse Mr. Ar knew—”

  “Silence!” snapped Fifi. “M’sieu, forgeeve Shoe, ’e ees not always the fool like this. Hilda, yes, you would like to know of ’er. M’sieu, eet ees not good. She ees married, Hilda, weeth three children, such good children, the last one only a year old. Already ’e ees walking, just beginning, you should see ’im. And laugh! ’Ow ’e laugh! That ees Jean.” It was her best effort at pronouncing ‘John,’ but succeeded no better than with ‘Joe’. “There ees Dorees, ’oo is four, an’ Charlee, ’oo is—’ow much, Shoe?”

  “Six,” said Joe, “but—”

  “’Er man, ’e fights,” said Fifi. “’E was in Cyprus, le pauvre, and then ’e go to Aden, an’ later to Borneo. Until then, ’ow long, Joe?”

  “It’d be about six months,” said Joe, glumly.

  “So, siss months. Until then, ’Ilda, she ees very happy, m’sieu. ’Er man goes, she ees sad. But she puts ’er children into a nairsery, and goes to work. That ees like Hilda, she never was a lazy one, eh, Shoe?”

  “No,” admitted Joe.

  Fifi drew a deep breath, then pouted and exhaled; her eyes were clouded and her hands were heavy upon the table.

  “From then, m’sieu, she ’as trouble. An accident, when she ees coming ’ome in the black-out, just a little accident but she says to Shoe an’ me, ‘I was pushed’. That is so, m’sieu, an’ Hilda, she would not image that. Then, she ees robbed. Et was not a lot of monnee, but eet was a big loss to Hilda. Little theengs, you say? But wait, m’sieu! ’Er Charlee, ’e plays in the street, an’ ’e ees run over. The man who ees in the car does not stop. Only the good God saved Charlee from worse than ’e suffered, le pauvre, but now—m’sieu, the doctairs, they say ’e weel not walk proper again.”

  Rollison felt a constriction at his breast, a sense of horror which the story alone could not have created, but only the background of Charmion; for such horrors as these the mind of Charmion might conceive in his quest for vengeance.

  “Is there anything else?” Rollison asked.

  Fifi’s face was twisted and there was hatred in her eyes.

  “M’sieu, eet ees a wicked thing. Only three days ago, now, ’Ilda was returning from her work. She ees at overtime, you understand, and she gets ’ome so late. Eet ees dark, and the streets are mysterious by night, m’sieu, you will know ’ow. Two men, they attack her. Hilda, she fights and struggles and screams, she knows that they would seduc
e her, she ees a good girl. They take the clothes from ’er, and they tie up her mouth, yes, but—m’sieu, there is a good God!—someone had heard her cries, and the police, they come. She was saved from much, m’sieu, but—now she ees in bed. The doctair, ’e says that eet ees shock. The beasts, they kicked and beat ’er when they ’ear the police.” There was a moment of silence, broken only by Joe’s heavy breathing, and then Fifi jumped up from the table and clapped her hands together. “So, m’sieu. Ees that by accident? Or ees Charmion free?”

  Into the name she put such depth of feeling that it seemed to hover about them. All the charm it possessed was gone; she made it seem an ugly, horrible thing.

  “Or ees Charmion free?” she demanded again. “Answer, please!”

  “He is,” said Rollison, gravely.

  “So! Shoe, I was sure; you call it imagine, but I, Fifi, ’ere in my ’eart I felt it.” She placed a beringed hand upon her breast. “Charmion. Why does not God lay hand upon the man an’ strike ’im dead?”

  “He’s only been out for a few days,” Rollison said. He was deliberately flat-voiced.

  Fifi looked at him wide-eyed, Joe fingered his upper-lip and did nothing to ease the tension. He expected Fifi to burst out with some excited comment, but it was Joe who pushed his chair back and spoke.

  “’E ain’t alone, is ’e? ’E’s got friends, powerful friends, if you arst me. I been trying to tell Fi that there’s nothing in it, but it ain’t no good, Mr. Ar. I knows it’s Charmion. I’ve ’ad a feeling ever since things started ter go wrong with ’Ilda. There ain’t a nicer kid in London but—what can anyone do against Charmion, Mr. Ar? Why, if I was ter go to the dicks, they’d larf at me. That’s wot they’d do—just sit back an’ larf at me!”

  “Perhaps that ees so,” said Fifi, her voice surprisingly mild. “But there ees M’sieu Roll’son, who does not laugh. M’sieu, you can do something, yes? You are already working, perhaps, against Charmion? That ees why you ’ave come, of course. M’sieu, you will need to be careful.”

  There was something touching about a faith which he could not betray, even if it were in his mind to try. Fifi’s eyes, brown and wide and intense, were turned towards him, Joe’s eyes were narrowed; he looked a great hulk of a man, she a fat slattern. He knew them for what they were, knew the depth of their feelings.

  Could they all be wrong?

  The great fear at the back of Rollison’s mind was that these things had happened to Hilda so that he should get to hear of them. Charmion would not waste time and effort, nor take risks for himself, and his accomplices, for so insignificant a person as Hilda. He would aim high; he would probably consider the Toff big game.

  What Rollison liked least about it was that the initiative was with Charmion; he had to wrest it from him.

  His first problem was to find the man.

  Chapter Three

  The Nerve War Grows Apace

  Rollison did not go to see Hilda, but returned to Gresham Terrace, where he told Jolly what he had heard. One of the things which Joe had said lingered in his mind – the probability that the police would laugh at the story. It was true that they might laugh at Joe, but not at him.

  Jolly said, with an almost uncanny insight: “When will you see Superintendent Grice, sir?”

  “Get him on the phone, will you?” He went to his bedroom and, while Jolly was dialling a number, took a suitcase from a drawer at the foot of his wardrobe, and carried it into the large room which surprised many people who entered it. One long wall was covered with souvenirs. His friends declared that it showed a morbid, even macabre tendency to display the weapons which had featured in many criminal causes célèbres; Jolly certainly disapproved. It was not that Rollison had any affection for the things; they merely fascinated him.

  He put the suitcase on the desk, then looked at a small glass case on a shelf plugged into the wall. Inside were the phials containing cocaine – phials which had helped to prove the charge of trafficking in drugs against Charmion. There were others in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard.

  Hilda Brent (at the time her surname had been Morgan) had handled those phials, but had been warned in time not to touch the contents.

  Jolly was a long time getting Superintendent Grice. Rollison opened the case; it contained manila folders in which were press-cuttings and other documents relating to various cases; he found the one referring to Charmion’s and a large photograph of the man.

  All that he remembered about Charmion was there, and more besides; on the right cheek, beneath the eye, there was a small mole. He checked the official police description, and found the mole noted there, set the photograph aside and read through the newspaper reports of the trial. The sober Gazette, never a paper to pander to the desires of a sensation-loving public, reported it almost verbatim. Rollison looked for the report of the last day’s hearing, and towards the end of it, he read:

  “Counsel for the defence, cross-examining Chief Inspector McNab, repeatedly asked whether the police had obtained the information about cocaine themselves, or whether they were relying on the evidence of a private individual, and whether that private individual might not, because of his personal animosity towards the defendant, be likely to produce evidence not wholly reliable?

  “Chief Inspector McNab reiterated that the evidence had been obtained by the police with the assistance of the Hon. Richard Rollison, and that the evidence had been thoroughly sifted before it had been presented.

  “And later, throughout the last stages of the trial, it was noticeable that the accused paid no heed to what was being said, but looked towards Mr. Rollison, who was in court only for a short time.”

  Rollison remembered the hushed silence when the jury had returned after considering its verdict, and that three women had fainted when the foreman had said: “Guilty, my lord.” Charmion had not fainted; he had looked at Rollison, his expression quite implacable.

  “Oh, confound it!” exclaimed Rollison. “Seven years ago! What the devil’s got into me?” He looked up as Jolly entered. “Have you got him?”

  “No, sir. He’s not at his home, nor at the Yard. No one appears to know where to find him.”

  “I’ll try myself later,” said Rollison.

  He did not succeed in getting in touch with Grice, however, and went to bed, his mind confused. One part of it argued, unconvincingly, that there was really no evidence that Charmion was responsible for what had happened to Hilda, and that the remarks Georgina had overheard and the man with the bowler hat and the umbrella were not connected.

  He slept well, and was called just after seven-thirty by Jolly, with the post and the papers.

  “Is there anything in the headlines?” Rollison asked. “Nothing of great importance, sir,” said Jolly. “I have opened the post.”

  “Thanks,” said Rollison. “All right.”

  He looked through the Gazette, drank a cup of tea, and took the letters from the envelopes which Jolly had slit at the top. There were seven; the first two were notes from friends, little things of no account. The third was a bill, the fourth from an aunt.

  The writing on the fifth was familiar. It ‘was always pleasant to hear from Diana, who had once imagined that he had broken her heart, and was now married and with three children – ‘like Hilda,’ he thought, suddenly bleak.

  Diana’s sprawling writing was easy to read:

  “Dear Rolly,

  I suppose you are still alive? Do you know that I’ve written three times without so much as a postcard in return? But I’ll forgive you, I know how busy you must be”—Rollison grimaced—“and as a matter of fact I’ve had my hands full, Peter’s had measles and Janet’s had mumps, I don’t know which is the worst. As for help these days, it’s hopeless.

  “Don’t scowl! I know you think the world is a terrible mess, and you have high-falutin’ ideas about making it a better place, and, of course, I agree with you, although it’s not easy to see how it will work. People are selfish, you know.

  �
��By the way, do you know a man named Guy? A funny little fellow who talks with a lisp? He called here the other day and asked for you – why he thought you might be here I don’t know. He said he owed you something or other – a very old debt, seven years old – and he was anxious to find you to repay it. He was rather wearying. I gave him your London address, but told him you were probably abroad – are you, by the way?”

  Rollison stopped reading, and looked out of the window to see the roofs of the other houses reflecting the morning sun; his eyes were bleak. He re-read that paragraph; he did not know a man named Guy, but its significance was all too clear. He finished the letter, which was filled with little anecdotes about the children, and then read the postscript.

  “Rolly, I know it’s silly, but that little man, Guy, has rather got on my mind. There was something I didn’t like about him, almost – don’t laugh! – sinister. Do write and set my mind at rest.

  Rollison put the letter aside, and looked without interest at the remaining letters – both of which had been left unsealed. He opened them mechanically; the first was a bill, the second a newspaper cutting which was folded, and yellow at the comers. He smoothed it out, his heart beating faster when he saw that it was a cutting of what he had read from the old Gazette. There was nothing else; just the part that he had selected so as to recall the way Charmion had looked across the courtroom at him, motionless yet menacing.

  Rollison lay back for a few minutes, smoking a cigarette. Then he looked at Diana’s letter again, at the cutting, and thought of Fifi and Joe, of Hilda, the bowler-hatted man and Georgina’s story. His full well-shaped lips curved in a slow smile which widened until it showed his large, white teeth. Then in a loud voice he cried: “Jolly! Jolly!”

  Only a slight pause followed before Jolly appeared.