The Toff on Fire (16 page)

“Mr. Rollison?”

“Yes.”

Marling held out his hand; the grip was firm and the hand cool.

“I nearly called you the Toff,” he confided. “I don't know of a man I've heard more about—mostly to your credit!” He motioned to a chair and took out cigarettes. “I don't think we'd met until last night, had we?” he added, and the smile was gay in his eyes and the lighter steady in his hand.

Rollison said mildly: “I don't even remember meeting last night.” He gave Marling a chance to come back at that, but the doctor let it pass. They sat down. “Dr. Marling, I know you're a busy man and I won't waste your time. Will you answer a few questions?”

“If I can, and if they don't incriminate me!”

Rollison studied, liked and even admired him; and that was a great deal to have decided in a few minutes. It wasn't just because of the man's appearance or his smile, it was his poise and self-confidence too.

“I don't think I want you to incriminate yourself,” said Rollison, “all I want is to find out if you have any idea who the Doc is.
The
Doc,” he repeated, “and I'm not thinking medically, it's just a nickname.”

“I know which Doc you mean,” said Marling, without a moment's hesitation. “Whether I suspect who he is—” he shrugged. “I don't like guessing, especially on such a subject, and in any case so much of what I hear comes by way of professional confidence that it isn't easy to answer everything I'm asked. But you know that.”

Rollison said mildly: “Yes, I know. Have you read the newspapers this morning?”

“Several of them.”

“Did any of them have a photograph of Miss Jeffson, who was shot and murdered yesterday?”

“No.” Marling looked puzzled but not uneasy.

“I didn't see her picture in the newspapers either,” said Rollison, “but I came across one, and you might be interested in it.” He took out the photograph he had taken last night.

Marling took one look, and his whole manner seemed to change. The smile faded from his eyes, and shocked horror replaced it. His lithe body lost its suppleness, and he seemed to be rigid, as if there had been some physical transformation.

He stared down at the picture, his jaws working.

Then, he looked up.

 

 

Rollison thought that the other man would strike him. What relationship had there been to cause such an effect as this – relationship with a woman whose name he did not know.

Name, or
alias?

The glitter in Marling's eyes held a kind of menace, and his hands clenched by his sides. Something stopped him from speaking; perhaps it was the shock, coming right out of the blue.

Then, he said harshly: “You sure?”

“I was with her when she died,” Rollison said.

“Why?”

“I'd discovered that she worked for the Doc.”

“Meg did
that,”
said Marling, and closed his eyes. After a moment he turned round abruptly and pressed a button in one of the bookcases; a small cupboard swung open, and inside there were glasses, whisky, brandy, gin, soda, vermouth. Marling poured himself a brandy, and drank it too fast. Then he waved towards the drinks.

“You?”

“Not now, thanks. Who was she?”

“Meg,” said Marling, and gave a laugh that was almost a cry. “My sister. My twin sister. Oh, my God! You— listen to me, Rollison. You must be mistaken. I just don't believe it!”

“Her face isn't badly scarred, and they will let you see her,” Rollison said gently. “She was taken to the morgue at Cannon Row, close to the Yard. But don't deceive yourself, Marling. She worked for the Doc, and he killed her.” He paused, but Marling didn't speak, seemed to be fighting to regain his self-control, so he went on: “I'll tell you some other things. I've been trying to find out who the Doc is. I've heard whispers, and they're all the same. That you're the Doc.
The Doc.”

Marling growled: “That's why you came here last night.”

“Never mind last night.”

“Whoever says it is lying and I'll ram the words down his throat.”

“Let's go on from there. You keep talking about last night. I know what happened then, and I know you had another man here, a man useful with his fists. Who is he?”

“Luke Dalton? He's odd job man here, I've just taken him on. Chauffeur, mechanic, general worker. In fact he's a damned good middleweight boxer.” Marling looked pointedly at Rollison's chin. “He's training now, and spends part time with me. He heard you about last night, and decided to teach you a lesson.”

Marling seemed to believe that.

“Who is he training with?” Rollison asked.

“Your friend Ebbutt. Your friend
Ebbutt,”
Marling repeated. He snatched a glance at the photograph of Meg, his sister, then went on savagely: “You talk about whispers, naming me. Why don't you keep your ear to the ground? Why don't you hear what they're saying about Ebbutt?”

Rollison thought, coldly, miserably: ‘The only whispers I pick up about the East End come from Ebbutt.' But he didn't say that. “Well, let's have it,” he said.

“They're saying that Ebbutt has fooled you for years,” Marling told him, and there was bitterness but no malice in his voice. “Let me be perfectly frank, Rollison. I'm prejudiced in your favour. I've read and heard about you for years—I've a young brother who hero-worships you. I've followed your career very closely, partly because the East End of London had always fascinated me. I like the Cockneys, I think they're the salt of the earth. That's why I took over this practice, right in the heart of the East End. I was looking forward to hearing more about you from the East Enders who were supposed to rate you high.”

‘Supposed'.

Rollison's expression did not change.

Marling smacked a clenched fist into the palm of his other hand.

“When I first arrived there wasn't a word raised against you, you were just the hero that my young brother always thought. A few months ago, there was a change in sentiment. You'd left for New York, and rumours started to circulate about Ebbutt, and the way he'd fooled you. You were said to have run away from the Doc, anyhow. It didn't need much to take that a step further—people who'd looked up to you began laughing at you. Ebbutt had taken you in for years, and you didn't know it.”

Marling stopped.

Rollison smiled, as if this was the easiest thing to sit and listen to, and he hoped that Marling took due notice as he asked: “Tell me one thing. How was it you got the ear of the people so quickly?”

“For two reasons,” Marling answered promptly. “Just after I came there was a nasty outbreak of typhoid, and with luck and quick work, we got it under control quickly. That broke the ice. The other is that I've always led the conversation round to you when I could. I didn't like what I was hearing—and I still don't like it. Sick people drop their defences much more quickly than most, and—well, I picked up all the gossip I could, simply because I was interested. Now I'm telling you what's being said about Ebbutt. And Ebbutt, apparently, is focussing attention on me.”

Rollison nodded.

“If what I hear about him is right, he's probably very edgy just now,” Marling said. “It's said that he made hay while you were away, but hoped to get most of his work done before you came back. You returned too soon, and he had to draw you into trouble quickly.” Marling sipped the brandy again, and then added with a twisted smile: “So as to get rid of you.”

He stopped.

Rollison had waited, until now, to spring his next question: about Esmeralda and this man. Marling looked as if he had recovered from the worst impact of the first shock, and Rollison said: “How well do you know Esmeralda Gale?”

“Not well enough,” Marling said abruptly. “She—she was a friend of my sister. Only a casual friend, I think. Maggie introduced—” he broke off, frowned, and went on abruptly: “It's none of your business.”

He closed his eyes, and looked away from the Toff towards the other photograph that was on a small table by his side. It seemed as if talking had taken his mind off the tragedy of his sister; but that the moment he had stopped, his thoughts had flashed to her. It was easy to judge from the tautness of his expression, and from the bleakness of his eyes, just how deeply he was hurt.

Then, he said huskily: “Are you quite sure that the Doc killed her?”

“Yes,” said Rollison, and watched the other man narrowly as he went on: “I'm also sure that the Doc has kidnapped Esmeralda Gale.”

Marling exclaimed: “Good God! She—” he seemed to catch his breath, and then went on harshly: “Why the hell should he?”

“I don't know. Perhaps to exert pressure, perhaps part of a kind of reign of terror, perhaps because he's some special reason. The fact remains that he kidnapped her.”

There was a pause. Then: “Now
I've
a double personal interest in this business,” Marling said roughly. “I tried to keep aloof from it, both sides get sick and I didn't want to keep any patient away. Now, I think it's past time I went to see Ebbutt.”

There was murder in his eyes.

“If you see Ebbutt or anyone else until you're back on an even keel, you'll be crazy,” Rollison said. “At least wait until tomorrow. If I were you I'd wait until you've heard from me again, I might be able to dig deeper than you.”

Marling said, more evenly: “I suppose I'd better not start anything yet, but don't get the idea that this is your job alone.”

“Our job,” Rollison said, and smiled gently, and stood up. “Mind telling me one other thing?”

“What's that?”

“What made you think I called on you last night?”

Marling's expression eased, and he went to the other side of the desk and picked up a visiting card. It was the familiar faceless man, jaunty and somehow challenging – and one of the cards which Rollison had dropped into the houses the previous night.

“Luke brought this in this morning,” he said. “He found a kiddie playing with it in the street. Then he did a bit of snooping, he knows I like the chit-chat, and he came here full of the story. In fact you almost staged a comeback, Rollison—it's the first time anyone has laughed at the Doc since he came on the scene, but there's a lot of tittering this morning. Luke said that he'd heard of eight or nine of these being found, all with people who work for the Doc. You can take it from me that the man in the street would like nothing better than to think you're back in form—
without
Ebbutt.”

“Or with Ebbutt cleared?”

Marling said: “That might take a lot more doing than you think, Rollison. There's one thing I haven't told you. The Blue Dog is believed to be the place where many of the messages to the Doc are passed on—through there, and Ebbutt's gymnasium. And there couldn't be a better place.”

“No,” agreed the Toff, “there couldn't be.”

Now he knew exactly what he had to do; and that it must be done at once. He had to force a showdown, and he had to do it alone, or all the respect the East End had for him would be buried in the past.

So might he.

He left Marling five minutes later, feeling quite sure that Marling would return to his study, and pick up that photograph. He did not believe that Marling had lied, and did not think that Marling was the Doc.

But Marling might work for the Doc.

He drove a few hundred yards along the road, and then stopped outside a telephone kiosk. As he went, he was aware of something he hadn't noticed before, but it proved his need to act now. No one nodded, smiled or greeted him in any way, although there were many whom he knew, and who knew him. It was almost as if the people were afraid to admit that they knew the Toff.

He telephoned Grice.

“… and Bill,” he asked, “have you picked up any more information about the woman Jeffson?”

“Yes,” Grice answered promptly. “She was the sister of Dr. Marling, a widow who has been living at the Lancing Hotel for about two years under an assumed name. She had a regular allowance, always paid into her account in cash, and obviously she was the mistress of a pretty wealthy man. We're trying to find out who. That what you want to know?”

“Yes, that's fine,” Rollison said. “Any other news in?”

“Nothing at all.”

“You haven't picked up Dan Rickett?”

“No, but I'm sure he didn't leave the country,” said Grice. “We haven't found his motor-cycle, either.”

“Esmeralda?”

“Nothing,” Grice said, gruffly, “and that's going to raise the biggest storm yet. Sir John Wylie has a lot of influence in Government circles, and he's beginning to raise Cain. His wife's almost distraught. How well
do
you know the family?”

“No more than I know Esmeralda.”

“You can't persuade Wylie to stop throwing his weight about, can you?”

“I can try,” said Rollison, cryptically. “Nothing guaranteed.”

He rang off, but immediately dialled his own number. Jolly answered almost at once – and something in his man's tone made Rollison pause in what he was going to say.

“What's the excitement, Jolly?”

“If that is the right word, sir,” Jolly said. “There was a note from Miss Gale, sir, which arrived by the last post—she had put her name on the back of the envelope, and I thought I would be wise to open it.”

“You were. What does she say?”

“That she thinks she knows who the Doc is,” breathed Jolly.

If Esmeralda knew that, no wonder she had been kidnapped.

Would she still be alive?

Rollison told Jolly what he planned to do, rang off, and went back to the Jaguar. Two small boys were studying it closely, but Rollison was less interested in the children than in three men on the other side of the road, who were standing and watching. They were men who might once have patronised Ebbutt's gymnasium; powerful and tough. They waited until he was at the wheel of the car, and then climbed into their own, and drove after him. He watched them in the driving-mirror; they kept just behind, there was no doubt that they were shadowing him.

The Doc probably wanted a showdown, too.

Rollison turned off the main road, and the other car followed.

There had been a time when to drive through here would be to stage a kind of triumphal procession, but today only a few people took the slightest notice of him – and most of those were policemen, who patrolled in pairs. It was a long time since that had been necessary by day.

The other car still followed him.

He turned into the street where the Blue Dog stood at the Mile End Road corner, with the gymnasium just behind it. Half a dozen men lounged about outside the gymnasium, not inside; usually only youngsters who weren't allowed in stayed outside. Rollison pulled up, across the road from the entrance to the big, low-roofed building, and the other car pulled up behind.

He got out.

He was aware of many people watching him from behind their curtains. He caught a glimpse of Liz Ebbutt, at the window of her bedroom. He saw the group of men draw up outside the doorway of the gymnasium. He took out a cigarette as he stepped towards that doorway. The three men followed him, and he knew that they were spreading out, so that he couldn't get away.

The window squealed.

“Mr. Rollison!” Liz Ebbutt screamed at him. “Don't come here, they're waiting for you. Get away!”

He looked up at the window, and grinned and waved. Then he lit the cigarette, and surveyed the five men who were lined up in front of the gymnasium doorway. Inside, he knew, there were several men stripped to the waist, in the middle of training and working out, but stilled, now, with the tension which his coming had brought.

“They'll tear you to bits!” Liz screamed. “Go away, Mr. Rollison, go away!”

This time, Rollison ignored her.

None of the men facing him was familiar, but several of those inside the big shed were cronies of Ebbutt, and once friends of the Toff's. Now, they hung back, as if they were reluctant to show themselves; but none of them made the slightest move to help the Toff.