Salute the Toff

by John Creasey

  He moved swiftly towards the bathroom.

  The door was open, and he slipped through, and then he found that by looking into a mirror above the hand-basin he could see the front door and most of the lounge. He kept one hand in his pocket about his gun and watched.

  Lorne came in.

  Behind him came Myra.

  The door banged, and Lorne took off his hat and dropped it into a chair. He looked red-eyed and tired. The woman also took off her hat and patted her hair into position. He judged that she had been wearing the hat for some time, for her hair was very tight against her head.

  “Thank God that night’s over,” Lorne said, and he stepped to a cabinet and helped himself to a whisky-and-soda, a bad way to start the day, and one that suggested he was not in a good state of nerves.

  “It won’t be long now, will it?” asked Myra.

  “It would be over by now if we could find Draycott,” said Lorne, and the Toff’s heart jumped. “I’ll slit Benny’s throat when I see him again. He swore he’d got Draycott at the flat.”

  “Luke, don’t talk like that!” There was courage in Myra, thought the Toff, and also something suggesting that she was not in crime for its own sake. “It’s been dreadful, but there’s no need to get so hardened to murder.”

  “Hardened?” Lorne sneered. “I’m hardened to it all right. I’m damned if I can understand why I’m on edge. There’s no way it can be traced back to me. But I wish Benny would turn up,” he added, and he drank his whisky. “That little runt will take himself into trouble one of these days.”

  “Luke—” Myra started, stopped, and then went on again breathlessly. “Luke, can’t we get away from all this when it’s finished? Do you have to associate with men like Benny and—and the others?”

  The Toff saw the reflection of the man’s face in the mirror. Lorne’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped towards the woman.

  “Now listen to me, Myra. There’s one thing you’ve got to get into your head. This is the way I live.”

  “But, Luke—”

  “There aren’t any buts. I told you when we started that I didn’t believe in working for a living, and I made a good one by being clever. Well, that stands. I can go about London as much as I like, and the police won’t have a thing against me.”

  “But what about Rollison?”

  Lorne swore. The woman flinched, and her face lost colour.

  “All Rollison can do is talk; he knows nothing. I can handle fools of his type; I’ve been doing it since I was born. And if you don’t like it you can clear out. Understand that.”

  “Oh, my God!” she said, and there was all the pain in the world in her voice.

  “That won’t help you,” growled Lorne. “I’m tired of you moaning and complaining. You’d better get back to where you belong; it’s nice and comfortable, and there’s no danger. So, make up your mind.”

  The Toff’s feeling was of pity for the woman, but contempt for Lorne. He could see her face, and knew that she was very close to tears. Lorne was glaring at her with flushed face and glittering eyes. His lips were wet and red, and he looked ugly.

  “You—you don’t mean that, Luke; you’re tired.” The voice desperate and afraid.

  “I mean it all right. I’ve been working myself up to saying it for days. I can stand you when you keep your wits about you, but the way you missed getting Rollison to talk—”

  “I—I hated that!”

  “You hate everything. You’d make me go to church if you had your way. Well, listen to me.” He stepped forward and gripped the woman’s shoulder, and the Toff saw her flinch. “Listen—to—me,” he repeated viciously. “You’ve linked up with me. You can stay and do what you’re told, or clear out—I don’t give a damn either way. But, whichever it is, you’ll watch your step, and you won’t talk. I can get you put behind bars, and it wouldn’t worry me to see you there.”

  “Luke, don’t say it! I thought—”

  “You thought” sneered Lorne. “You’re not the first I’ve strung along with and you won’t be the last. A woman’s no use to me if she ain’t got guts” – the ‘ain’t’ made the man seem even more brutal – “and doesn’t know her place. Get that clear, you red-haired bitch.”

  The Toff saw her fists clench, and her eyes narrow. Suddenly she struck at Lorne on the right cheek. He was taken so much by surprise that he staggered. Then he jumped at the woman. She half screamed, but the sound was stifled in her throat, for Lorne’s hand gripped it. Lorne was still swearing, acting like a man who had gone mad.

  “I’ll kill you—I’ll squeeze the life out of you! I’ll teach you to hit me, you whore!”

  The Toff moved quickly, and reached Lorne without being noticed. He gripped the back of the man’s neck with such pressure that Lorne gasped. Then he brought his knee up against Lorne’s rear, jolted the man’s spinal column and forcing him to release his grip. Myra fell. By then there was a sound from the bedroom, and the rattle of the door-handle. As the door failed to open, Harrison shouted: “What’s the matter out there? Open this damned door!”

  Lorne was trying without success to turn his head to see his attacker. The Toff increased his pressure, moving his fingers a little and getting round to the jugular vein. With Lorne gasping for breath, gasps which were getting fainter with each second, the woman making queer little moaning sounds, and Harrison shouting, there was bedlam.

  Harrison stopped abruptly, as if he realised that if he brought strangers up it would cause trouble. The Toff did not relax his grip, but increased it, until Lorne suddenly went limp. He made sure that the man was not feigning.

  The Toff bent down and ran through his pockets, taking out the wallet and all the papers. Next he took one of his own cards from his vest-pocket, one that had already been decorated with the little drawings of the top hat, the monocle and the swagger-cane. He scribbled across it:

  Don’t bother to return it.

  Then he folded it and threaded it in one of Lorne’s buttonholes.

  Harrison was making an attempt to pick the lock.

  The Toff took the whisky from the cabinet and moistened Myra’s lips with it. A trickle that went into her mouth made her gasp and open her eyes. He did not know whether she recognised him or not, but he lifted her, and she stood swaying in front of him. The marks of Lorne’s fingers were still red and ugly on her throat.

  “You’re coming with me,” the Toff said, so quietly that he was sure that Harrison could not recognise his voice. The woman raised no protest, and he judged that with assistance she would be able to get downstairs. He opened the front door, closed it after helping her through, and then started the laborious journey to the lift. It was self-operated, and there was no one in the passage or in the hall when he reached it.

  A taxi had just deposited a fare, and the Toff called him. He helped Myra inside, told the cabby to drive to 55 Gresham Terrace, and then he sat back and wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead.

  Myra sat in a corner, staring at him; he could not be sure whether her expression showed fear of him or whether it was the reflection of the horror she had experienced. That had been something she was not likely to forget.

  She was steadier on her feet when they reached the flat, and the Toff sat her in a chair, kept the door of the kitchen open so that he could see her, and brewed tea. She looked woebegone and dreary even when she had finished it. The finger-and-thumb bruises on her throat were turning blue.

  “Well,” he said at last, “that was nasty. Do you feel that you can talk?”

  She stared at him, and her amber eyes showed a sudden searing alarm. Her lips started to tremble, and she said in tones it was difficult to hear: “Why didn’t you let him kill me? Why didn’t you? I don’t want to live, I tell you, I don’t want to live!”

  “It might not prove so bad,” said th
e Toff.

  But she went on sobbing, repeating wildly that she did not want to live. He left her in the room alone for a while, leaving the bedroom door open so that he could hear her.

  He thought of sending again for Anthea, or for Fay; they might be able to help. He was looking through the papers taken from Lorne’s pockets as the thought flashed through his mind, and putting aside some letter which might prove of interest. He did not lose himself in the task, for he had one ear open all the time. But the cries and her hysteria muffled the sound of the opening of the front door of the flat.

  The first thing that attracted the Toff’s attention was a sudden silence from Myra. He straightened up, looking towards the door. Then he heard a movement that sounded like a footstep. He moved towards the lounge, and was in time to see a man by the door, with his hand on the handle, and looking over his shoulder.

  He was an undersized little man, with a burn-scar under his right eye – the man who had been with Lorne at the Queen’s Hotel in Manchester.

  In his right hand was a knife. He flung it.

  The Toff saw it coming towards him, ducked, and fired from his pocket. The shot echoed loud and clear, while the bullet struck the man’s thigh and brought him down. As he fell he began to cry, but the Toff was paying him no attention.

  He was looking at Myra, who might have told him so much; but Myra was lying back in the chair, and with a vivid crescent of crimson about her neck.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Man With The Scar

  It had happened, and there was no purpose in accusing himself yet again of a sin of omission. Nor, as he stepped towards the woman and made sure that she was dead, did the Toff reproach himself. There was no way he could see in which he could have avoided this.

  He let the limp hand go, and stepped to the door.

  The man had stopped swearing. He did not look so much scared as vindictive, and when the Toff bent over him he kicked out with his uninjured leg. Rollison dodged the kick, yanked the man up, then carried him and let him fall on a settee. The blood was coming through the navy blue trousers. The Toff put a towel on the seat.

  “Do you want first aid or don’t you?”

  “You can ruddy well do what yer ruddy well like!”

  The Toff cut away a patch of trousers and swabbed the wound; the bullet had gone into the thigh, and probably touched the bone.

  “You’ll need a surgeon,” said the Toff. “A police surgeon, too. What do they call you?”

  “You won’t git a word outa me!”

  “Won’t I, Benny?”

  The man’s surprise was ludicrous, and told the Toff that this was the Benny whom Lorne had mentioned; that was nearly conclusive evidence – judging from Lorne’s conversation with Myra – that Benny had murdered the man at Grey Street. The knowledge was satisfying; the man’s refusal to talk was not. There was no way in which the Toff could think of making him.

  He telephoned Scotland Yard. McNab was not there, but an inspector promised to arrange for a police-surgeon and an ambulance to come at once.

  Until their arrival Benny had maintained a sullen silence. On it he began to swear again, and nothing the inspector or the surgeon could do quietened him. The latter confirmed the need for an immediate operation for the removal of the bullet, and that the bone had been touched.

  Benny continued to hurl blasphemies until he was carried out on a stretcher.

  Detective-Inspector Wilson, young, spruce and eager, watched the middle-aged and uncommunicative surgeon examine Myra. He waited until the surgeon had pronounced his obvious verdict, asked questions about the bruises, and then had gone. By then the Toff had given Wilson the address at Dring Mansions; it would be better, now that Myra had been killed with such heartlessness, to bring Lorne in. He felt sick at the failure, but was not depressed for long, and the arrival of McNab cheered him.

  McNab took the story on its face value, and seemed convinced that for once the Toff had told the whole truth. He did not even complain that the Toff should have told him of Lorne much earlier.

  The Toff had not mentioned Harrison.

  He hardly knew whether to be pleased or sorry when he was told that the police had found the flat empty, and that there had been all the signs of a hurried departure. He knew that a call would go out immediately for Lorne, while McNab had at least the satisfaction of getting the murderer of the woman.

  But later that day, after the Toff had seen Anthea and Fay, but while nothing else had developed, McNab reported that Benny continued his refusal to talk. He denied everything despite the evidence against him, and he called the police and Rollison liars. He denied that he had ever been to Grey Street, and therein he made his second mistake.

  He was identified by a ground-floor tenant at the flats of No. 14, and the time of his visit there coincided with the estimated hour of the first murder.

  “And wi’ that I’m satisfied we can fasten both crimes on him,” said McNab, who called at the Toff’s flat a little after seven o’clock, over a light meal, which the Toff arranged to be sent in from Fortnum’s.

  “So you’re getting results,” said Rollison slowly.

  “And thanks t’ye, although we didn’t know it,” said McNab with some complacency. “But there’s much we dinna know yet, Rolleeson. When we find Draycott—”

  “What do you call the most important outstanding factors?”

  McNab, in the middle of a grilled sole, considered.

  “Well, shall we put Draycott’s whereaboots first? And then the identity of the man killed at Grey Street. And finally the reason for the whole of it.”

  “You could do that,” admitted the Toff.

  He did not enlarge on his own opinions, chiefly because they were not yet properly formed. But when McNab had gone and he was alone he lay back in a chair and considered. He granted that McNab’s three factors were important enough, but there were others which he added himself. They were:

  1. Was the Mid-Provincial Building Society involved?

  2. Were any of the Harveys involved?

  3. What was Harrison’s part in the affair?

  When those questions and McNab’s were answered there would be little to inquire about, but he also admitted that he was a long way from seeing the answers. He was cheered up a little when he learned, soon after McNab had gone back to the Yard to look at any reports which had come in, that the man Benny had been identified as Benjamin Kless, with an address in Shadwell.

  Kless was not known to the police, but he might be to friends of Bert, and the Toff decided to visit the gymnasium. He had telephoned Fay that day, but had not seen her. Harrison had not put in an appearance; it was possible that he would keep out of the way, although the Toff hoped that he would think he had not been seen. Harrison might well prove the key to the whole affair. There were other problems, including the identity of Myra, but they were of lesser importance.

  Jolly had not returned.

  The Toff was hardly surprised at that, for Jolly would not come back until he was sure that he had discovered all that was worth learning about the cottage near the New Forest. He left a note in the kitchen, and just after ten o’clock left the flat and took a taxi to Mile Corner.

  For the first time he saw that he was being followed.

  He did not recognise the man, but a cab trailed him as far as Aldgate Pump, where his taxi was held up at the traffic lights, and from then onwards a small car had kept behind him. He suspected that it was being driven by a man who had in turn followed the second taxi. It was a youngish man, as far as he could see when the car passed beneath the lamps.

  The Toff entered the Mile Corner just before closing-time.

  Bert, a barrel-shaped man with a tremendous chest and width of shoulder, with an almost bald head and a slightly wheezy voice, was behind the bar. The arrival of the Toff
, in lounge clothes that altered the expressions on the faces of some of the stevedores and labourers drinking there, made Bert’s shining face shine even more in a smile of welcome. Within two minutes they were in a small parlour behind the bar, and Bert was pumping the Toff’s hand.

  “It’s good t’ see yer, Mr. Ar! I wasn’t surprised, knowin’ there was a bit o’ su’thing up.” Bert winked prodigiously. “My boys did yer a bit o’ good, eh?”

  So Bert had not had a confession from Manchester, and the Toff did not disillusion him. He thanked Bert gravely, and made inquiries about Kless. Bert had not heard of him, but he took Kless’s address, and promised news by the following midday.

  “Not a minnit later, s’welp me,” said Bert earnestly. “Any-fink else I can do for you?”

  “You can find me a change of clothes,” said the Toff, and Bert widened his blue eyes.

  “Goin’ out an’ about, are yer? Well, I can easy do that for yer, Mr. Ar.”

  It was not the first time that he had changed at Mile Corner. Bert had a small room at the top of the hotel where the Toff kept two or three suits of clothes that would have shocked his relatives. They were old and soiled and they made him look at one with the native inhabitants of the East End. Especially was he proud of a collection of brilliantly coloured caps, and he liked to take two or three with him when he went on his travels, so that he could change his cap, and thus improve the chance of being unobserved.

  When he had changed, he used a box of grease-paints, which he also kept at the Corner, and a few deft lines at his eyes and mouth, with a little shading, altered the whole cast of his countenance. By day, and under a close scrutiny, it would not have passed muster. By night it made quite sure that no one would recognise him as the Toff.

  Bert watched the transformation with growing amusement.

  “Caw,” he said, “yer a wonder—I’ll say that, Mr. Ar! Bless me, I never saw anyone like it. A quarter of a bloomin’ hour an’ you ain’t the same man. ‘Ow yer do it I doan know. All set an’ feelin’ pritty?”