Here Comes the Toff Read online

  Renway seemed quite blind to that possibility.

  Renway, in fact, was an old man who had never married and who was ‘seeing’ a woman for the first time in his life. It was surprising that one of Irma’s type had managed to snare him; he might have been expected to look for someone older, as company in his declining years.

  Or might he?

  Wrightson realised, if a little vaguely, that only Irma’s startling looks could in the first place had attracted so confirmed a bachelor. She knew how to handle Renway, of course, and on the few occasions when she had met Wrightson she had been pleasantness itself. In short, he knew nothing specific about Irma to explain his acute dislike of her, and yet he knew that that dislike was in no small measure the reason for the trouble between himself and his uncle.

  He was honest, too, when he claimed that he did not mind whether or not he inherited Renway’s money. He had a few thousand pounds put aside, and he was experienced enough, and had enough friends, to get a reasonably well-salaried position in the City.

  That would mean an income sufficient for Phyllis and himself.

  He smiled as he thought of her, and wished that friends had not claimed her for the evening. She was somewhere in North London, and he did not even know the address. Odd, how lonely he felt when she was out of his reach.

  After trying to read, he stood up from his chair, deciding to try to walk through the Parks to settle his mind. He did not make the experiment, however, for as he entered the hall there was a ring at the front door. He opened it, and in some surprise saw the immaculate figure of the man he had met that afternoon.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Renway’s out,” he said.

  “I’m not surprised,” said the Toff. “I came to see you, Mr. Wrightson. I hope I’m not in the way.”

  Wrightson was intrigued, and in any case glad of the diversion. Rollison entered the house for the second time, and Wrightson found drinks – not Amontillado, but Johnnie Walker. Rollison chatted idly for a few minutes, for he wanted thoroughly to whet the other’s curiosity. And he was succeeding.

  He liked Wrightson even more at the second meeting than at the first. A clean-cut fellow, whose rugged good looks bespoke honesty as clearly as his blue eyes.

  After thinking over the situation, the Toff had decided that a talk with him would be the next step in his plan of campaign, basing the decision on his assessment of Wrightson’s character.

  He opened the subject unexpectedly.

  “I know it will seem an impertinence, Mr. Wrightson, but I came to see if you know much about the lady who is taking up so much of your uncle’s time.”

  “No-o,” said Wrightson, slowly.

  He was inclined to be offended at first, however; he could think what he liked about his Uncle’s friends, but certainly it was no business of other people’s. Yet there was something about the Toff’s smile that smoothed him down. “Isn’t this rather an unusual opening gambit?”

  “I won’t say that I know for certain,” said the Toff, who did not propose to commit himself on any point at that moment, “but I’ve an idea that she has been mixed up in some shady business in the past. She is – again I’m guessing – an adventuress of a rather different kind, and it seemed possible that you might be able to give me some idea of the kind of thing she might be able to wheedle out of you uncle. Does that make the gambit more understandable?”

  He said it all lightly, but it shook Wrightson, who had considered nothing more than the usual association of rich man and loose woman with ambitions.

  “It’s still peculiar. What is your particular interest?”

  “Purely that of an amateur,” said Rollison cheerfully. “I have been known to look on when the police are working, and I know one or two of the rules. It struck me that if I could do anything to stop developments, you might like it. Provided developments are in the offing, of course. Kick me out if you want to,” he added, with a smile. “Gently, of course!”

  Wrightson did not kick him out.

  For one thing, he suddenly remembered that he had seen the name of this man in Old Bailey trials; for another, he realised that a scandal of any kind would probably make his uncle’s heart flutter for the last time. And, as the Toff had hoped, he liked the direct approach on a delicate subject.

  He told all he knew and felt – that he disliked Irma, had warned his uncle against her, and would certainly watch any point that might arise. As far as Wrightson was aware, the only thing his uncle was planning was a new company, and Wrightson himself knew little about it. It was an electrical business, and executives from several large companies had promised to join the new one. Renway had kept everything quiet, wanting to put the new company on the market quickly and suddenly.

  That, thought the Toff, was a considerable point. It might have been inspired by Irma, of course. On the other hand, it was a good business ruse, and there might be nothing questionable about it. He made no comment, and learned, among other things, of the trouble Renway had had with a man named Martin, an accountant who had worked for him for years. Martin was the only man apart from Renway himself to know a great deal about the old man’s finances.

  And then Wrightson mentioned Sidey – and the Toff knew he was getting very warm.

  Sidey, Wrightson said, was an ex-convict who had been employed by Renway on Martin’s introduction. Martin had been dismissed soon after Sidey.

  Rollison already wondered whether there was a direct connection between Renway’s ex-employees and Leopold Kohn.

  Unfortunately Wrightson did not know where Martin lived, and the Toff would have to locate him. He did not think that likely to be difficult.

  It was past nine when Rollison took his leave. Wrightson still felt puzzled, yet easier in his mind. Rollison, he recalled now, had a reputation to be envied; and if he was holding a watching brief, there was little or nothing to worry about.

  It was an easy attitude, and a soothing one, for Wrightson’s major concern was for the girl, Phyllis.

  At twenty past nine the telephone rang. Wrightson answered it abruptly, and then his face brightened.

  “Phyl, thanks be! How did you escape?”

  “The party’s postponed until tomorrow,” said Phyllis Bailey cheerfully. “I’ve been dreadfully busy, darling, but I thought you might care to entertain me for an hour …”

  “Where are you?”

  “At Baker Street.”

  “Hop on a bus, darling, and come here. He’s gone out …”

  Renway was referred to as ‘he’ between them – “and we’re all right for a couple of hours. I’ll run you home in the car before zero hour. I’ve lots to talk about, including a visit from a man named Rollison, and his opinion of sweet Irma will make good hearing.”

  Phyllis laughed, promised to hurry, and rang off.

  She arrived twenty minutes later, and Wrightson’s earlier enthusiasm for the Rollison-Irma subject dimmed; they talked of more personal things, which was only to be expected.

  He related the story of his quarrel with his uncle, and the end of it, and although she professed to be pleased, actually she was worried. The last thing she wanted to do was to cause a breach between Jim and his uncle, and little that had happened suggested that there would be a reconciliation while she remained engaged to him.

  It had never occurred to Jim that she might break the engagement. It might not have occurred to her but for the fact that she knew Jim was worried, and hated the sight of his troubled face when ever – as now often happened – there had been words between him and Renway.

  Phyllis had often wondered whether it would not be wiser for her to drop out of Wrightson’s life. It depended, of course, on how much he really loved her. It was difficult to estimate, difficult to be sure whether he was in love with her or whether the opposition from Renway made his feelings seem more acute than
in truth they were.

  She was a small girl, yet not tiny, a brunette, and – as even the Toff would have agreed – very easy to look at. There was, in fact, a likeness between her and Anthea, although Anthea was so fair and Phyllis Bailey so dark. There was the same acute intelligence in grey eyes which were very steady, the same high brow, the same complete self-confidence. Her nose was short and the least bit retroussé, her lips were full and quick to smile. She sat back in an easy chair opposite Wrightson, completely self-controlled, graceful even while unmoving, nursing one knee in her hands and showing nice legs, and ankles which could hardly be more shapely.

  She was a writer – not well known, though there was a circle of readers who enjoyed her books, which were neither fight romances nor heavy tragedies. She could capture the passing phases of modern life perfectly, and had a gift for characterisation which was the strength of her published work. A small independent income enabled her to write what she liked, as apart from what would earn the most money; and there were critics who prophesied for her a brilliant future.

  The Toff would have liked her.

  She looked on Wrightson rather in the same way as Anthea looked on her Jamie. He seemed incredibly young at times, at others older, far, than herself. There was so much about him to love: his directness, his honesty, his easy laughter, the warmth of his love for her. Still, she wondered whether it would be wise to allow this breach with Renway to worsen, wondered if he would be happy if she allowed it to.

  She saw no way of healing it.

  Thought of giving him up hurt: but other things in her life had been painful, and in his. If it would be the best thing for him, she could do it.

  “Do you think he’s dangerously ill, Jim?”

  “We-ell, he is, of course. Anyone with a dicky heart ought to be careful, and he used to look after himself well enough. Fussed too much, as a matter of fact. Some doctor told him that he ought to get about more, and just then the Curtis woman arrived. He started stepping out, and of course nothing I can say now will make him see that he’s asking for trouble.”

  “But if these attacks come more often he can’t avoid seeing it.”

  Wrightson shrugged.

  “You’d think so. But she’s got such a hold on him that he just won’t see what’s under his nose. I think he would get up from his sick-bed to go out with her. Certainly he shouldn’t have left his room tonight, to trot about the Embassy, with half London laughing at him,” For a moment Wrightson looked and sounded bitter, but he went on in a few seconds with a light laugh: “We shouldn’t grumble, at all events. The Fates work with us, my sweet – I get an evening free here, and you’re let off! What happened to the party?”

  “Big business or something equally tiresome.”

  “Hm. How’s work?”

  “I can’t complain,” said Phyllis. “I keep doing a little, and every day brings the new book nearer completion. One day I’ll write a book worth writing, but now …” She shrugged, and laughed. “It doesn’t matter, Jim. What are you doing?”

  He lifted his hands expressively.

  “Hanging around. A dog’s life, but I can’t leave the old man as he is now, and he depends a lot more on me than he pretends.”

  “Ye-es,” said Phyllis slowly.

  Wrightson’s expression showed surprise.

  “Why do you speak like that, Phyl?”

  Her grey eyes were sober.

  “I don’t like the way things are developing, Jim. He’s set very firmly against me since he read some of my work – the Lord knows what he would think of the really modern writers if he calls mine indecent! and I don’t want to force an issue.”

  Wrightson leaned forward and gripped her hand.

  “Forget it, darling. You’re not forcing an issue, he is. We mean too much to each other to look on it like that. If the true course won’t run smooth …” He shrugged; and in a few seconds he was sharing her chair – and Renway, the possibility of a broken engagement, work, worry and the Hon. Richard Rollison, were completely forgotten.

  Rollison, meanwhile, had been summoned posthaste to Chamley Mansions, where Lady Munro greeted him with such warmth that he knew she had recovered from the aspersions which he had cast on Jamie. She gushed a little, allowed him to know that she was a devoted reader of thrillers, and assured him that to meet in real life a man who had figured as the central character in current novels was the thrill of the century.

  The Toff made his escape to Anthea’s room before her mother lapsed into the broad Americanisms of gangsterdom, to find Anthea looking thoroughly charming against the pillows, with a pink kimono about her shoulders. He pulled up a chair, and said severely:

  “I’m not even going to shake hands with you, you incomparable charmer. If I do I shall forget myself and confess my love, and then what would poor Jamie do?”

  “Fool! Rolly, I’ve discovered something about Wrightson and his girl.”

  “Good. Is she a Commie?”

  “I wish you’d be serious. She writes.”

  “Well, that’s no crime.”

  “Modern stuff,” said Anthea. “Slightly advanced – but nice. I’ve been dipping into her latest – Things We See – and it’s good, Rolly, it really is. I’d like to meet her. What kind of a man is this Renway?”

  Rollison followed the trend of her mind.

  “Very chaste, I imagine, where women are concerned. One of the old school, who considers the modern miss improper if she wears no stockings, and thinks toreador pants a creation of the Devil.”

  “That,” said Anthea, “explains it. Phyllis Bailey’s very modern—no dirt, Rolly, but definitely frank.”

  Rollison leaned forward, scanned a few pages of the book lying open on the bed, and then looked up thoughtfully.

  “Certainly it explains Renway’s dislike. I wonder if she’s a beatnik or jeebies’ chick, all wild parties and bad language.”

  “She isn’t. Her people are most respectable, and she lives in Chelsea with them. She’s rather sweet, I’m told.”

  “Who told you?”

  “A friend who knows her.”

  “Hmm. Intelligence level?”

  “High, apparently.”

  “Renway’s opinion is different. Well, I’m bound to see something,” said Rollison, “although I’m a long way from sure what it will be. You don’t know anything more about Wrightson, do you?”

  “Not a lot,” said Anthea. “I found a girl who’s fiancé knows him. He plays cricket and rugger, and got his cricket blue for Oxford five years ago. He doesn’t do anything but help his uncle in his private business, and he’s always been pretty fond of the old man. So far he hasn’t shown anyone that he feels differently about him. He’s quite crazy about Phyllis Bailey.”

  “He looked that way to me,” said the Toff. “Anthea, you’ve been a big help, and thanks a million. Keep your ears and eyes open, and if you learn anything else that might be useful, phone me. Jolly can take a message if I’m out.”

  “What a funny-looking fellow he is, Rolly.”

  “Is he?” smiled the Toff. “He’d be delighted if he heard you say so, my pet, he thinks he always looks miserable. And now I’m off! Oh, when does the ankle begin to support you again?”

  “Tomorrow,” said Anthea firmly. “Doctor or no doctor.”

  “Sense or no sense,” smiled the Toff. “All right, but it’s on your own head if you have to go back to bed for a week. And what would your Jamie do then, poor thing?”

  He went downstairs, dexterously escaping Lady Munro, knowing that the drawing-room door opened as the footman closed the front door behind him. He stepped into the darkness of Park Lane, pondering on Anthea’s information, and finding that it was more of a hindrance than a help.

  In one way, that was.

  It was easy to understand
why Renway would not countenance the engagement of his nephew to a women who wrote what he would consider ‘advanced’ literature. Or, more likely, ‘obscene’ literature. The library at the St. John’s Wood house had proved that his taste was very innocuous, for none of the more advanced novelists had been included – there had been no Huxley, no Joyce, no Lawrence, only the steady, middle-of-the-road type of book, in which the characters were, for the most part, fully, even excessively, clad.

  Renway was obviously stubborn too, and a man of set ideas.

  The snag, as the Toff saw it, was that Anthea had located so sound a reason for Renway’s opposition to the Wrightson-Bailey match, that it seemed unlikely that Irma was fanning the flames. The flames just would not need fanning. If that assumption were the right one, it cancelled the theory that Irma was trying to get Wrightson disinherited so that she would have more money when she married Renway.

  If she married Renway.

  Of one thing the Toff was certain. If she married him, he would not live long. Irma would not stand marriage to the old man; she would only contemplate it if he could be killed off, and his money pass into her hands.

  The Toff had been rather fond of that theory, but now that it was weakened he thought more of the new electrical company that Renway was starting.

  Wrightson could be believed, of course.

  Moreover, Renway had assured Rollison that Bi-Nationals were perfectly good shares to hold. That might mean that Renway did not expect his new company to affect the Bi-National Corporation, or it might have been a move to cover up the indiscretion of his confidences in the Toff.

  How far, in short, could Renway be trusted?

  There were other questions.

  Rollison wanted to get in touch with the man Martin, who might throw an interesting light on Sidey’s activities. Martin had introduced Sidey to the millionaire, and then Sidey’s true worth had been discovered, and both men had been fired. Rightly so. But thereafter, unless he was right off beam this time, Sidey had been murdered at Kohn’s instigation.