The Toff and the Great Illusion

by John Creasey

  “Jolly, it’s on!” said Rollison, and he sounded almost gay. “Charmion’s on the trail. After him. Jolly! Run my bath, try to get Grice again, then get Miss Georgina Scott on the other line and ask her if she can lunch with me. If she can’t, coffee at eleven. If she’s engaged for that, tell her that if she leaves the house before I see her this morning I’ll never speak to her again.” He tied the cord of his dressing-gown about him and breezed into the bathroom to shave.

  He had lathered one side of his face when Jolly said that Grice was on the telephone. Rollison went into his study, and picked up the receiver.

  “Now what’s got you up so early?” demanded Grice, who sounded sour. “I haven’t had three hours’ sleep.”

  “Sorry, old chap, but I must see you this morning.”

  “It will have to be after twelve,” said Grice. “I’m due at Marlborough Street.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Important enough,” said Grice. “What’s worrying you. Rolly? I’m really so full up that—”

  “Charmion,” said Rollison, as if the name was an Open Sesame. He was mildly disappointed when Grice seemed unimpressed.

  “Well, what about him?”

  “That’s what I want to tell you about, but not over the telephone,” said Rollison. “Shall we say twelve-fifteen?”

  “All right,” said Grice, and rang off.

  Rollison finished shaving, and was in his bath when Jolly said that Miss Scott, would not be free for lunch, but would be happy to meet Mr. Rollison at eleven o’clock, at the Kettledrum, but that she would only have a quarter of an hour to spare. Rollison enjoyed his breakfast and, immediately afterwards, ran through the reports of the Charmion case again. They affected him very differently from the night before; the only thing that made him sober up was thought of the attack upon Hilda Brent. He telephoned the Yard, this time asking for Sergeant Wilcox, whom he knew was liaison officer between the Yard and the Division which covered Hilda’s district.

  Wilcox recalled the case, he said; a nasty business, but not isolated. There were fewer of them in London than in other parts of the country. No, the men responsible had not been caught; it was not certain whether they had been in uniform or not.

  Rollison said, “Thanks,” and replaced the receiver, going into the kitchen, where Jolly was busy.

  “Would you remember Charmion if you saw him again?”

  “I certainly would, sir!”

  “Good. Look for him!” Rollison waved a hand, airily. “I don’t know where you’ll find him, but he might be in London. Inquire, pry, prod. The magic word is Charmion. You’ve enough imagination to find a good reason for looking for him, haven’t you?”

  “I think so, sir,” said Jolly, cautiously.

  “Good!” said Rollison, smiling widely. “The needle in the haystack was no harder a quest than this. I know! The thing is, we aren’t going to sit back here and wait for it; the hunt’s up. You’d better phone me here or at the Carillon if there is anything of interest—oh, I’ll be at the Yard from twelve-fifteen onward, and Grice will probably lunch with me. All right?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jolly.

  He did not relish it; Rollison knew that, knew also that at the back of his own mind he was as apprehensive as Jolly. Only his reluctance to sit back and wait for Charmion to make the first attack compelled him to go out and look for trouble.

  He was ready before Jolly, and at a quarter to eleven walked towards the Kettledrum, a small coffee-house off Piccadilly which had flourished since the war; it had one entrance in Old Bond Street, where its popularity as a rendezvous increased every day.

  Georgina was waiting.

  She wore a tailor-made suit of light green sharkskin, with a green hat to match; the trimmings were the colour of her lovely auburn hair. Usually her eyes were glowing, for she was full of life and always in a hurry. As Rollison approached her, however, she was sitting at a small comer table and staring at a card – a menu card, Rollison thought at first. In fact it was an ordinary postcard. As Rollison reached her, she looked up; she was pale.

  “Hallo, ’Gina,” he said. “You look worried.”

  “We-ell,” said Georgina, “I am, rather. Such a queer thing happened, Rolly. Just as I was coming in a man pushed against me—it was rather unpleasant. I found afterwards that he’d tucked this card into my coat—” She put her hand between two of the buttons of the coat, to make clear what she meant. “He was a funny little man, but I didn’t like the way he said: ‘Give this to Rollison.’ I mean, Rolly, how could he know that I was meeting you? And what does ‘Charmion’ mean?”

  Rollison managed to keep a sober face.

  “It’s a name for charming people,” he said, lightly. “I think you’ve been dreaming dreams, ’Gina. Let’s sit down.” He pulled a chair out for her, and beckoned to a waitress, trying not to show exceptional interest in the card she held lightly. She sat down, slowly, and put the card in front of her; the side which was upwards was quite blank.

  Normally, she would have said indignantly that she had not been dreaming; now much of her natural vivacity seemed to have been drained away. Rollison ordered coffee, and picked up the card, saying: “Are you sure he said you were to give it to me? And where did you get the name Charmion?”

  “Of course I’m sure!” said Georgina. “And I don’t go about daydreaming, Rolly! It’s so queer. The name—I read it on the card.”

  He turned the card, and then looked up at her.

  “’Gina,” he said, gently, “what kind of game is this? There’s nothing written here at all.”

  Chapter Four

  No Evidence At All

  Georgina stared at him, her eyes gradually losing their dullness, and sparkling with a sudden, resentment which was much more natural.

  “I know there isn’t, but there was! It faded in front of my eyes. There was one word – Charmion. It was in green ink, and I thought, there was something the matter with my eyes when it began to grow faint. Then you arrived, and I looked round – and the next time I glanced at the card there was nothing. Rolly, is this a practical joke?” She began to smile, and dimples appeared, unexpectedly. “Oh, you idiot! You’ve been fooling me!”

  Rollison shook his head,

  “You have!” she insisted, and then the coffee arrived, and she began to pour it out, her eyes brimming over with humour. “What a priceless ass you are, Rolly! Of course, disappearing ink! I am a fool to have let it upset me. I don’t know why it did, except—he was rather a beast, and it was a shock to have the card pushed at me. He—” She narrowed her eyes and held the coffeepot suspended over a cup. “Rolly, what are you looking like that for?”

  He was staring past her, through the window.

  A man moved on. Rollison caught sight of him only for a moment, but it was long enough to see the wavy hair, the sardonic smile on the full lips, and almost feminine beauty. It was Charmion, as he had seen him seven years before. Time might have stood still during those years, for the man, spending the prison-life like a Rip Van Winkle, and resuming precisely where he had left off.

  Rollison knew that it would be useless for him to go outside to try to catch up with the man, and he lit a cigarette. Georgina brushed a wave of hair back from the side of her face and handed him his cup.

  “What is the matter?” she demanded. “You look, as if you’d seen a ghost.”

  “Ah,” said Rollison, relaxing. “Yes, one might say a ghost. ’Gina, do you remember talking to me on the telephone last night?”

  “Of course, I do.”

  “The man you saw at the Savoy with Teddy – it was Teddy Marchant, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. He was so anxious I should tell you.”

  “I’m glad he was. Now tell me if I’m describing the man who mentioned my name.”

  He gave her a vivid pen-picture of Charmion – just as the man had been in the photograph and at the window. As he spoke he knew that two things were grievously wrong. In the first place, it wa
s not natural that Charmion should have altered so little, and in any case his hair would not be long if he had just come out of jail. In the second place, Charmion would not have been able to guess that he was coming here to meet Georgina. The fact that the appointment had been known was alarming; Rollison fought a losing battle against believing it.

  Georgina widened her lovely eyes and said: “What are you talking about, Rolly? He was nothing like that at all! I told you—or did I forget?—that he had close-cropped hair. Like a convict’s. That was why Teddy was so anxious that I should tell you about it; he seemed to think—but, of course, you do send men to prison, don’t you?” Rollison gulped.

  “I help them to get there at times,” he admitted. “Nothing like my description, you say?”

  “Nothing at all like it. But then, I only caught just a glimpse of him, and he had his eyes half-closed. He was rather a peculiar-looking man in some ways – he didn’t look quite natural. His face was pale—unhealthy, as if he’d been living underground for a long time.”

  “What about his voice?”

  “There wasn’t anything very unusual about it,” said Georgina; “it was just a voice. Rolly, are you sure you haven’t been pulling my leg?”

  “No tricks from me,” said Rollison. “On me, perhaps. How many people have you told that you were coming to meet me here this morning?”

  “Why, no one.”

  “Now, come, reproved Rollison. “Didn’t you mention it to a single soul? Just as an item of gossip, or as a reason why you simply had to leave them with hardly a word?”

  “Brute!” exclaimed Georgina. “You’re laughing at me. I’m all mixed up, Rolly, and I’m sure it’s only because of the nasty look in that little man’s eyes. I told Mother, of course. I might have just happened to mention in passing to one or two people. I’ve been to the committee office in Lewis Street, and there are always dozens there. We had a lot to do, and there was rather a strained atmosphere when I said I absolutely had to come out, but your man sounded so serious on the phone that I daren’t let you down. And my maid, of course, she knew – she made a note on the pad for me as soon as I’d finished on the telephone. I was just going to have a bath. And I remember now, I met Peggy Bliss—you know Peggy, don’t you?—and I told her.”

  “Just in passing,” murmured Rollison, faintly.

  “That’s right,” said Georgina, earnestly. “She was coming out of a shop, and we stopped for a moment, I—Rolly!”

  “Go on,” he said, resignedly.

  “Do you know, I could swear I saw that funny little man outside the shop where I met Peggy. He was standing and looking in the window it was a display of lingerie, some men are like that. He looked just the type, too. Of course, I might be wrong, but I’m almost sure. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, does it? Do you know, I feel much better now that we’ve been able to talk it over. Shall I keep the card, or will you?”

  “I’d like to,” said Rollison, taking it and slipping it into his pocket. “Now before you go—”

  “But I absolutely must fly, Rolly! You’ve no idea the number of black looks I received when I came out, they’re always like that these days. I don’t know why they should be; after all, it’s only voluntary work and I put absolutely hours in.”

  “If you have to stay here an hour more,” said Rollison grimly, “you’ll describe the funny little man.”

  “Isn’t that a good enough description? Funny-looking? I don’t remember anything about him, except that he had rather beady brown eyes, and funny little bushy eyebrows; you know how some people’s grow, you’d think they’d pluck them, or cut them, or something. And he was just like a parrot – that’s funny, he talked like one, too!”

  “Oh,” said Rollison. “He talked like a parrot?”

  “Yes,” went on Georgina serenely. “He couldn’t quite form his words properly, he had a lisp. Well, not exactly a lisp, but something like that, and he couldn’t really roll his ‘r’s.’ I mean, he made it sound more like ‘Wollison.’ No, ‘Wollithon,’ so I suppose he couldn’t sound his esses, either, and that means he did have a lisp, doesn’t it?”

  Rollison agreed that it did.

  When she had gone he stood by himself opposite Hatchards. But though he was looking across the road, he saw neither the windows of the bookshop nor the people passing by; he did not even reflect upon, the number of obvious foreigners.

  A little man, named Guy, and talking with a lisp, had called on Diana in Hertfordshire; surely Georgina’s little man was the same?

  He took a taxi to Marlborough Street, stopped at the Police Court, asking the first sergeant he saw whether the Court was still sitting; it was, and the sergeant also told him that Superintendent Grice was there.

  “You’re not interested in this case, Mr, Rollison, are you?” asked the sergeant.

  “Crime passess me by these days,” smiled Rollison.

  “Oh, yes?” said the sergeant, sceptically. “Once it’s in the blood like it’s in yours, Mr. Rollison, you can’t get it out! And the case that Superintendent Grice is on this morning—well, it was the kind of thing that would have interested you a lot in the old days.”

  “Why, what is it?”

  “Snow,” said the sergeant succinctly. “Cocaine, Mr. Rollison. There’s a lot of the stuff about these days. It’s wicked, isn’t it? Mostly women, too. It’s natural they like a little excitement, I suppose, to take themselves out of it, but if you was to ask me, if they went in for less excitement and set about living properly, they’d—”

  He broke off, and hurried away, for the door of the courtroom opened and two or three detectives walked out, footsteps echoing in the barely-furnished passage. Then the general public filtered out, and through the open door Rollison could see the prisoner going into a room opposite. Grice was with him.

  Rollison was looking hard at the Superintendent when a deep voice spoke at his side.

  “Hallo, hallo, if it isn’t the Toff! Are you in this case.

  Rolly?” Rollison gazed, not with favour, upon a jovial-looking, red-faced man who had a dilapidated trilby upon the back of his head and was wearing a badly-soiled macintosh. This worthy was in the act of lighting a cigarette; he offered one from a battered packet to Rollison, who accepted, lit up and said: “I am not.”

  “Emphatic negative means an affirmative, or am I wrong?” demanded the other. “Seriously, old man, have you got anything? These Police Court jobs are the very devil these days, hardly worth reporting, but you never know what you might miss. This is just another snow case, except”—a pair of large, shrewd eyes narrowed—“Oh-ho! I thought Grice was taking more interest than he usually does. Grice—and then you. Now come on, let’s have the lowdown. If I could get a really good break it would help a lot, Rolly. The Press is a dog’s life these days, unless you’re on the political or military side.”

  “The emphatic negative meant ‘no’,” Rollison assured him easily. “I’m not in it, Mike. I want to see Grice before I leave Town again, and they told me I’d find him here.”

  “Just for old time’s sake?” grinned Mike, sceptically.

  “No,” said Rollison. “A friend of mine had a nasty time in Mile End a few days ago, and I want to find out who was behind it.” He looked hopeful. “Do you know the case I mean?”

  He knew that he had to give Mike Anderson, of the Echo, a reasonable explanation of his waiting to see Grice, or he would be in danger of being dogged by a reporter who was reputed to have a nose for news and who was certainly persistent. At the same time, it was possible that Anderson would know something of the attack on Hilda Brent. The last thing he wanted was to arouse Anderson’s curiosity too much.

  Anderson raised an eyebrow.

  “There are lots of nasty affairs in the Mile End, Rolly. You ought to know—it’s your beat.”

  “Ye-es,” said Rollison. “I haven’t been there much lately.” His feeling of disquiet increased; he was always sensitive to trouble east of Aldgate.

  And
erson shrugged.

  “More’s the pity! What’s your particular worry?”

  “A woman named Hilda Brent,” said Rollinson, “she was attacked and beaten up.”

  “Nothing worse?”

  “No.”

  “We just haven’t got much room for that stuff these days,” said Anderson, “but you might find something in the local rag – I don’t need to tell you which it is. I must get going. I’ll do a column-and-a-half on this morning’s stuff and it’ll be cut to about four inches.”

  He nodded and went out. Soon Grice came hurrying out with an inspector and a sergeant. He stopped at sight of Rollison, spoke to the inspector in an aside, and then approached Rollison as the inspector and the sergeant went out.

  Grice was a lean, spare man, dressed in brown; he had brown eyes which had been called soulful, although Rollison did not subscribe to that description; they were watchful eyes which missed very little. Not particularly good-looking, the Superintendent had a remarkably fine complexion; it was almost transparent, and the skin was stretched taut over his pointed nose, making him look thinner than he was.

  He shook hands and smiled a little crookedly.

  “So you couldn’t wait until I was at the office?”

  “Must you go back to the office, or can you have lunch with me?”

  “Thanks, I will,” said Grice.

  “Good – we’ll take a cab.” Rollison directed the driver to the Carillon, then sat back beside Grice, who stretched his long legs.

  “I don’t think I should have told you that Charmion was out,” he said. “You’ve been imagining that he’s busy, I suppose?”

  Rollison said: “Why suppose anything of the land?”

  “Need we fence?” asked Grice. “One thing’s certain, Rolly. It isn’t Charmion. He’s not been out long enough. None of his one-time friends are in it, and I don’t think any of them are very interested in Charmion himself. No, it’s something new this time. I suppose I’ll have to spend the whole of the next two hours convincing you, but you’re an astonishing fellow – how did you know what was afoot?”