John Creasey - Stars For The Toff

They crossed the road by Green Park and reached a bus stop, where there was already a small queue. Charlie held back until a free taxi came along, and hailed it.

“Follow the bus I tell you to,” he ordered. “And look out for that blond fellow in the blue jacket, talking to the old girl with grey hair. Let me know if you see them get off.”

The cabby, little more than a boy, said “Okay!” with great eagerness.

A bus came along almost at once and the couple boarded it. The cabby followed— through Knightsbridge, then along Brompton Old Road, then into Fulham Road. Charlie satback, smoking in a lordly fashion. Slowly they lumbered over Stamford Bridge towards Fulham Broadway, and then the driver looked over his shoulder and said excitedly:

“Here they come.”

“Drive past,” hissed Charlie.

The driver overtook the bus and pulled up in front of a large removal van, which effectively screened it from Stride and Mrs Abbott. Charlie paid the driver off, and sauntered back along the street until he saw his quarry turn down a side road of shabby terrace houses. By the time Charlie had reached the corner, Mrs Abbott was standing beneath a shallow porch while Lucifer Stride waited on the pavement.

“Quite sure you’re all right?” His words floated back to Charlie.

The woman mumbled her reply.

“Sure you wouldn’t like me to come up with you?”

Charlie saw the woman shake her head. Then she disappeared into the house.

He moved into a doorway and waited to see what his quarry would do next—would he carry on down the street, or would he turn back? But for the next twenty minutes or so Stride stood irresolutely outside the house into which his companion had disappeared. Charlie, peering from his doorway, watched him looking anxiously up at the windows. “He’s worried about the old girl,” thought Charlie. “Can’t make up his mind whether he ought to go in after her or not.”

But at last Stride came to a decision, and with one last backward look, he retraced his steps towards the main road. Charlie dived back into his doorway, and Stride passed without a glance. Charlie gave a little grin of satisfaction—but as he swung in the wake of his quarry, a sudden clatter of footsteps behind him made him turn his head. Looking back, he saw two tall dark-haired men leap into a small black car which had been parked along the street.

Charlie shrugged. “Some folk are always in a hurry,” he thought. Then, with a start of dismay, he realised that Stride had reached the main road.

“Gawd!” exclaimed Charlie. “I’ll lose him.”

He dashed across the road after his quarry— then heard the car close behind. He glanced over his shoulder.

As he did so, he felt a terrible surge of fear, for the car was heading straight towards him. He made a desperate effort to get clear.

One moment he was running.

The next there was an awful crunch of sound, and his body went sailing through the air.

As it thudded to the ground the car roared up the road and disappeared round a corner.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Old Glor y ”

Rollison turned the wheel of his Bentley into a square of Georgian houses in the middle of which was a beautifully tended garden—a few late flowering shrubs, two magnificent beds of red and pink tulips, and a stretch of bright green lawn enclosed in black iron railings. At one side of the square three houses had been knocked into one, and now comprised the Marigold Club. This had been described by cynics as a house for fallen angels, but in fact it was a club for women in genuine distress, whether the distress was caused by a faithless lover, an errant husband, or some less emotional crisis. Lady Hurst owned it. Lady Hurst ran it—although with the help of a staff of remarkable efficiency. The manageress, a little, auburn-haired woman with a pleasant face and clear, green-gold eyes, opened the door as the Bentley drew alongside.

No one knew how she managed it, but there was always room to park outside the home of Lady Hurst.

As Rollison stood aside for Madam Melinska and Mona Lister to enter, she appeared at the foot of the stairs, tall, erect, Victorian in appearance and in severity of manner. Her plentiful near-white hair was swept upwards in Edwardian style, her skirts rustled, rows of pearls on the high neck of the grey silk dress were lustrous and somehow restful.

She came forward, arms outstretched, to greet Madam Melinska.

“My dear, how very nice to see you. And Mona, too. Come along in.” She turned to Rollison. “You, too, Richard.”

It was a command.

“If we can talk business,” Rollison said.

“Don’t you think that Madam Mel—”

“Aunt,” said Rollison firmly, “we’re in deep waters and if we’re to get out we need to use every minute.”

Lady Hurst fingered her horn-rimmed lorgnette.

“Very well,” she said, “but I hope you won’t be too long.”

They were moving towards a high-ceilinged, gracious room with beautifully-carved oak mantel-surround and ceiling of flowers and cherubim. Velvet curtains of pale blue draped the high windows. It was like a scene out of Jane Austen, Rollison reflected.

“Well, Richard,” his aunt said when they were settled.

“The police don’t bring a charge like this without some cause,” Rollison declared. “I haven’t studied the circumstances yet, but you seem to be convinced of Madam Melinska’s integrity. Why, then, did the police bring this charge?”

Mona clenched her hands in her lap. Madam Melinska smiled faintly.

Lady Hurst looked almost fearsome. “I was and am quite assured of good faith.”

“The charge says that Madam Melinska and Mona conspired together—”

“They did not conspire.”

“But Madam Melinska advised you to buy shares in Space Age Publishing, did she not? And now, not only has the money you invested disappeared, but the company is virtually insolvent.”

“It was not insolvent at the time she advised me to invest,” Lady Hurst stated, “was it, Madam Melinska?”

The way she asked that question seemed to suggest that a simple “no’ would be sufficient to satisfy her nephew, if not the law. Madam Melinska, hands resting on the arms of her chair, shook her head.

“Not to my knowledge,” she said.

“ Did you advise people to buy them?”

“I don’t know,” said Madam Melinska quietly.

“ You don ’ t know? You mean you don’t remember?”

“I do not recollect what I say when advice is being given through me. I am simply the channel through which the advice is given.”

“You mean you are in a trance?” Rollison asked faintly.

“Richard,” cautioned his aunt warningly. “Don’t sneer.”

“The last thing I’d do, Aunt. The very last thing. But were you advised by Madam Melinska when she was in a trance?”

“Yes.”

“And you took her advice?”

“Yes.”

“Goodness gracious,” Rollison said, in hollow tones. “Did Madam Melinska tell you that these shares were a good investment?”

“She did.”

“Did you pay her the money?”

“I sent a cheque to the company, but they say they never received it. The cheque was cashed and endorsed on the behalf of the company but the police say it didn’t go through the company’s books.”

“Well, it might help if we knew who cashed it,” said Rollison drily. “Have any of you any idea?”

“None at all,” said Madam Melinska. “None at all, Mr Rollison.”

“ That is what you are to find out,” added Lady Hurst, severely.

Rollison frowned. “I’m sorry, Aunt. The whole thing sounds a complete cock-and-bull story, and that’s what the police think it is. The company was—”

“The company was, and should still be, a perfectly reliable one,” Lady Hurst said. “It has been established for over sixty years and I have known of it for most of that period. It was and should still be flourishing.”

Rollison looked thoughtful.

Before bringing Madam Melinska and Mona Lister to the Marigold Club, he had been busy telephoning newspaper friends as well as friends in the City, and he now knew most of the story. Space Age Publishing, Limited had once, as his aunt said, been a flourishing company. Then, quite recently it had been sold, and within a few months ugly rumours of bad debts, unpaid accounts and serious shortages in stocks began to circulate. It was now known that the company was virtually bankrupt.

“What went wrong doesn’t necessarily concern us,” said Rollison. “Nevertheless, this was the company in which Madam Melinska persuaded you, and others, to invest. Where did the money for those investments go? As I said, it appears to have completely disappeared—and it seems that the police think Madam Melinska and Mona have something to do with its disappearance.”

“The charge is absurd,” said Lady Hurst. “Why neither of them could even pay for their own bail.”

Rollison frowned. “Some people think that this is a sham—that Madam Melinska has the money but is pretending poverty in order to make the charge seem absurd.”

“Do you believe that, Mr Rollison?” asked Madam Melinska quietly.

Rollison looked at her without speaking, feeling an odd compulsion to say: “No.” But until there was proof of what had happened to the missing money, no one could be sure.

The dark, compelling eyes met his.

“If you help to find the truth you may be badly hurt, Mr Rollison, many of your friends may turn against you. But you will get help from unexpected sources.”

Rollison stared back, determined that her gaze should drop before his; but it did not. He was beginning to wonder how long he could keep this up, to wish that his aunt would make some kind of interruption, when there was a tap at the door. It was the auburn-haired manageress.

“I’m sorry, Lady Hurst, but there is a telephone call for Mr Rollison. A Mr Jolly. He says that it is extremely urgent.”

For Jolly to say that, it must be, thought Rollison.

There was no telephone in the drawing-room, and he got up, murmured an apology, and went out. He could feel the gaze of the three women, his aunt’s tinged with a slight hostility, Madam Melinska’s reproachful, the girl’s frightened. He picked up a telephone in the hall.

“Yes, Jolly?”

Jolly said: “It’s grave news, sir, I’m afraid.”

His pause underlined the statement, and Rollison caught his breath in sudden alarm. “Charlie Wray has been fatally injured—in a car accident, so-called. The car didn’t stop, but a passer-by took a description of it—and the police think it may well have been the car that tried to run down Lucifer Stride.”

* * *

From that moment, Rollison’s attitude towards the inquiry changed. Until then he had been involved almost in spite of himself. Now, he was involved because he meant to find out who had killed Charlie Wray.

The next few hours were a nightmare.

First, he went to Fulham, to see and identify the body.

Next, he drove to the East End, where Bill Ebbutt lived, massive, flabby, wheezy, generous Bill Ebbutt, who found “work’ for a dozen boxing has-beens at his gymnasium which was next to his pub, The Blue Dog, near the Mile End Road. As the Bentley turned the corner into the mean street of tiny terrace houses, men and women turned to stare and the whispers began.

“It’s the Toff . . . Toff . . . Toff . . .”

“TheToff’s here . . .”

Toff, Toff, Toff, To . . . Rollison felt that he could hear the soubriquet from a hundred lips. And he saw the men and women, brought by the bad news, gathered outside the wooden gymnasium. The entrance was lined with people, nearly all of them men—mostly friends of the dead Charlie, old sparring partners, old opponents of the ring.