The Toff and the Great Illusion

by John Creasey

  “Hum,” said Rollison, and murmured aloud: “Thinking caps, decidedly.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Thinking caps,” said Rollison. “I was discussing them with Grice. It makes us think. What does it make us think? Does it make us think what we should or what someone else would like us to?” He contemplated the bust for some seconds, then shot a sidelong glance towards Jolly. “Am I talking drivel?”

  “I think you’re a little preoccupied,” said Jolly, tactfully.

  “Yes. Have you touched the thing yet?”

  “No, sir, I thought, it wiser to leave it severely alone.”

  He eyed the thing with extreme suspicion.

  “So do I,” said Rollison, “but I can’t. Someone threw some water over me outside the Club,” he added, dreamily. “For a second or two I was sure it was a Mills bomb, and expected to wake up in the next world. A booby-trap of an innocuous nature, of course. This is Number 2. Unfortunately, it might not be so harmless as the first. Go and make me some tea, Jolly, will you?”

  “I’d rather stay here, sir,” said Jolly. “I presume you propose to dismantle it now?”

  “We’ll have to start, one day. We can’t keep it in the flat thinking it might go off, and we can’t put the job on to bomb-disposal. I’ll do this by myself,” he added. “You make some tea.” He smiled, but made it clear that he was determined. So Jolly left the room reluctantly. Rollison, conscious of the uncomfortably fast beating of his heart, drew nearer the effigy.

  Gingerly, he undid one of the coat buttons; the coat sagged, but nothing else happened. He tried the second and the third, with the same result. But there was a waistcoat beneath, and with each button Rollison felt a tension which increased, although he was absorbed in the task. He did not deceive himself: the thing might well be an infernal machine, set to go off at the slightest touch on the right place, and as such it would be in keeping with Charmion’s particular sense of humour.

  He took the coat off when the waistcoat was unbuttoned, then worked at the collar and tie. All the time the beady eyes stared at him, as if they were carrying a message of evil, a threat, a menace which made the room seem warm and made the Toff ’s hands moist.

  He had stripped the thing down to the stuffed canvas carcase when Jolly came in, carrying a tea-tray. He put the tray on a small table and contemplated Rollison thoughtfully.

  “Shall. I pour out, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Rollison, preoccupied. “There’s only the face now, you see. A good mask, made by an expert. Could it be Guy’s real mistake? He—Jolly!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Guy!” repeated Rollison, staring wide-eyed at his man. “Guy, of course! A stuffed effigy representing the notorious Guy Fawkes—no, I’m not rambling, but it’s a superb touch. The name, the effigy—Jolly, I admire these beggars!”

  “One might almost think they were endeavouring to make a guy out of you, mightn’t one?” said Jolly, impassively. “Strong or weak, sir?”

  “Strong,” said Rollison, eyeing his man suspiciously. “Is that what you think?”

  “What, sir?” asked Jolly, pouring the tea.

  “That they’re making a convincing guy out of me?”

  “Good gracious, no, sir!” Jolly looked embarrassed but contrived to convey a slight reproach in his glance. “That was the last thing in my mind, but they may think that is what they’re doing. Many people have misjudged you in the past, and I see no reason why Charmion should judge you any better than the others. I have been thinking, as a matter of fact, that we may be crediting Charmion with more resourcefulness than he possesses,” continued Jolly. “After all, he is just a man, an ordinary human being, with his limitations made greater by his incarceration during the past seven years. I am wondering if—”

  “Stop it!” said Rollison, sharply. “You don’t think anything of the kind.”

  “No, sir,” said Jolly, meekly.

  “What are you driving at? And have some tea yourself.”

  “Thank you, sir, but I had a cup immediately after lunch. I don’t know that I am driving at anything in particular,” continued Jolly, his lined face set in sober concentration. “I was really disturbed when I first heard you say that Charmion was free, but I have wondered since whether we have not over-estimated his powers.”

  “You think he’s suffering from advanced senile decay? He goes to the trouble of breaking in here and having this thing planted on us, just for fun? He thinks it will amuse me, perhaps?”

  “No, sir,” said Jolly, “but—”

  “Go on.”

  “We have no real assurance that Charmion sent that here, have we?” He looked benignly upon Rollison, “I feel sure that you have perceived that obvious fact.”

  Rollison sipped his tea, eyeing Jolly over the top of the cup. “So you’re beginning to wonder whether it is Charmion, are you? No one else would have a mind quite like this, they would miss somewhere.”

  “Precisely, sir,” said Jolly, “a qualification.”

  “And yet,” continued Rollison, as if there had been no interruption, “would Charmion draw attention to himself quite so deliberately? The first moves were in keeping, so they were all right. But the theft of his press-cuttings and his photographs, the disappearance of the cocaine—hum, yes. Too direct, you think?”

  “I’m beginning to, yes.”

  “Someone—let’s call him Guy—thinks it would be a help if he were to make it appear that Charmion was on the trail,” mused Rollison. “There’s one thing we forget. Charmion has a strong reason for wanting to work upon my nerves. Has Guy? Has anyone else?”

  “That is a point I had not considered,” admitted Jolly, frowning. “It’s most confusing, but—”

  “We’d better finish with our Guy,” said Rollison. “Pour me another cup, will you?”

  He turned to the effigy and, very gently, removed the grey wig. Jolly seemed indifferent to the operation, but Rollison was intent, wondering if, at the last moment, the trap might be sprung. As he worked, his hands quite steady but his heart beating fast, he called himself a fool for taking this chance, and then reminded himself that he could expect no else to take it for him.

  The wig lay on the desk; the bald wax head of ‘Guy’ was revealed, shiny, smooth, bumps even showing on the cranium.

  “A phrenologist’s dream,” said Rollison.

  He removed the head, easing it gently to and fro, finding the wire which kept it in position and pulling it upwards very carefully. He felt that if there were to be an explosion, it would come now; but he was able to insert a finger into the sawdust filling of the bust, unhook the wire, and lift the head right off.

  He felt warm with perspiration.

  “I don’t think there’s any likelihood of trouble now, sir,” said Jolly, more confidently. “What shall we do with it?”

  “Keep it there for the time being,” said Rollison, and smiled with relief and amusement. “I like it, Jolly! and we’ve something to work on now. A genuine expert in wax models made that face. There aren’t many in the country. A wig- maker of distinction made the wig, and one of the others of his fraternity might be able to identify the manufacturer. Each will have his own peculiarity—perhaps a trade-mark. And then there are the eyes. They’re perfect, Jolly, as lifelike as you’ll find anywhere. How many eye-makers are there left in the country? Half a dozen at the most; it’s a craft that’s dying out, swamped by mass-production.”

  Jolly said quickly: “You think we may be able to trace the maker, sir?”

  “Yes.” Rollison began to prod gently at the eyes, which sagged inwards a little, then turned the head upside down; it was hollow, and the wax was very hard, although the surface was slightly resilient. “Genuinely empty-headed,” he said, “except behind the eyes – it looks as if they’ve even manufactured a brain for the gentleman! Did I tell you that I saw Charmion in Old Bond Street?”

  “What?” cried Jolly. “In person?”

  “Charmion as
he was seven years ago, obviously after taking an elixir,” said Rollison. “It struck a false note then, and I know why, now. It was someone made up to look like Charmion, of course, it wasn’t natural. Charmion’s face and complexion always looked as if they’d been touched up by an expert, and that man I saw when I was in the Kettledrum might have come out of a stage dressing-room. You see the connection? This face, perfectly made up. A man, made to look like Charmion, everything set to make me look for Charmion. I wonder if Grice—”

  “I’d rather like to find out whether I can trace the maker of the face sir,” said Jolly. “You will remember that I have mentioned my friendship with Saul Lauriston, of the Arts Club. I feel sure that he would be able to identify the maker.”

  “Meaning that you found no trace of Charmion this morning.”

  “I didn’t sir, but I don’t think there was ever very much hope,” said Jolly. “Of course, if you prefer to ask Mr. Grice—”

  He paused, hopefully. Rollison, suddenly becoming absorbed in the padding behind the eyes of the face, did not speak, but prodded at it gently with his forefinger. He felt the material sag inwards – and then, without warning, the padding broke. He heard a faint hissing sound, and saw a little cloud of vapour, and he dropped the head and backed away, coughing, his eyes feeling as if they were on fire.

  Chapter Seven

  Unexpected Visitor

  Rollison said, thickly: “Blast him! It’s ammonia gas.”

  “Am—ammonia, sir,” gasped Jolly. “I—I really think you’re right, sir.”

  They stood on either side of the hand-basin in the bathroom, bathing their eyes with sponges and looking at each other through tears, coughing all the time. They were better now but the ammonia still made their nostrils smart and gave a peculiar dryness to their lips and mouths.

  Before leaving the study, Rollison had flung the window up to let out the smell, and the air in the room was clear enough when they returned, chastened and, in Rollison’s case at least, feeling a little ridiculous. At the back of his mind was one disturbing fact: had there been some lethal gas behind the eyes he would have fallen for it just as easily.

  Like the water, it had been a booby-trap; like the water it proved how easily he could have been injured. Had the water container been a Mills bomb, or had the ammonia been cyanide or even phosgene or its equivalent—

  “Will it be all right for me to try to find out who made the head and the eyes, sir?” asked Jolly.

  “Yes,” said Rollison. “We’ll give Grice a miss this time. You can’t go out yet, you look as if you’ve been crying your heart out!” He smiled, but not good-humouredly. It was as if Charmion were standing nearby, laughing at him in sardonic mockery.

  It must be Charmion.

  Yet Jolly had been right to raise the query; it was too obviously Charmion. Had anyone else been involved, Rollison would have felt sure that it was an effort to make him concentrate upon Charmion and miss the real issue.

  “Apart from the head and eyes,” said Jolly, “there isn’t a great deal we can do.”

  “No,” admitted Rollison. “But there might be soon. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Charmion were to walk in now and ask me how I were getting on,” he added.

  It was half an hour after he had identified the gas, and they were looking more normal and clearer-eyed. Jolly had made a neat parcel of the head of the effigy; he left the flat soon afterwards, leaving Rollison in a thoroughly dissatisfied frame of mind. He was jumpy, and when a car back-fired in the street he got from his chair quickly, looking down into the street but keeping close to the wall, to make sure that he could not be seen from below.

  Walking sedately along the pavement on the other side of the street was a neatly-dressed man, wearing a bowler hat and carrying a furled umbrella.

  Rollison turned, stepped swiftly across the room and hurried downstairs. He was quite sure that it was the man who had followed him on the previous evening; the fellow was pursing his lips as if whistling under his breath, and the slow, steady gait was exactly the same.

  Rollison almost collided with a tenant of one of the lower flats, apologised hastily, and reached the street. He looked towards the Piccadilly end, where the man had been walking, but there was no sign of his quarry.

  “Well, well!” said Rollison, a little vacantly.

  He walked rapidly as far as the end of the road, but his man was not hiding in a doorway. He retraced his steps and reached the far comer, still without finding anyone. He walked back more leisurely, but the uncomfortable feeling of being constantly spied upon increased, making him feel even more jumpy. He whistled aloud to keep his spirits up, and when he returned to the flat lit a cigarette and stepped to the window, with no specific thought in his mind.

  The man in the bowler hat was walking on the opposite side of the street!

  Rollison stood quite still.

  His sedate air gave the man a peculiar kind of jauntiness; his very presence was a challenge. He did not look right or left, but instead of whistling he was smiling and looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

  Rollison stepped to the telephone. It had a long lead and he was able to carry it nearer the window, so that he could look out as he talked. The man in the bowler hat disappeared, from his line of vision for a moment, but returned soon afterwards, just as Rollison, after dialling Scotland Yard, said quickly: “Is Superintendent Grice there, please?”

  “I’ll see, sir,” said the operator.

  Rollison’s quarry walked past the window again and then Grice came on the line, to say: “Grice speaking.”

  “Send me a man,” said Rollison, imploringly. “A good tailer, Grice, who will really make himself inconspicuous. Send him over to the Terrace as soon as possible, will you, and tell him to watch and follow a man in a bowler hat, with a morning coat and striped trousers and carrying a furled umbrella. Tell him—”

  “What’s the man been doing?” demanded Grice.

  “Disappearing,” said Rollison. “Every time I go after him he vanishes. It’s the neatest trick I’ve ever seen, but your man should be proof against it, and the joker can’t very well know that I’m phoning. Will you? For old time’s sake,” he added urgently. “I may be all at sea over this, Grice, but—”

  “I’ll send a man,” said Grice.

  “Good man!” said Rollison. “I’ll see you later.”

  He replaced the receiver and approached the window more closely, but still stood on one side. His quarry walked to and fro with fine aplomb, looking neither right nor left, giving the impression that he had an appointment which he was quite sure would be kept, and that he was in no hurry.

  Rollison lit a cigarette and was halfway through it when he saw another man enter Gresham Terrace – a thin, nondescript-looking fellow who walked with a slouch; Rollison recognised him as Detective-Sergeant Wilson, one of the best men Grice had.

  A taxi drew up outside the house; Rollison could just see it, although he was unable to see the man or woman who climbed out. He waited until the cab moved off and the bowler-hatted man continued his steady walk along the street; Wilson was nowhere in sight, but Rollison felt quite sure that he was at hand.

  The front-door bell rang.

  Rollison stubbed out the cigarette and went to the door, prepared to find that it was another trick; everything that happened seemed likely to prove a booby-trap, something to upset him and to quicken his tension.

  When he opened the door a man of medium height, wearing a Homburg hat and a dark overcoat, stood motionlessly on the threshold.

  “Good afternoon,” said Rollison.

  There was something vaguely familiar about the caller, although he did not recognise him. It was as if something that had happened a long time before returned to his mind, a wisp of an affair that had been important at the time but had long since passed into the limbo of forgotten things.

  “Good afternoon, Rollison,” said the caller. “Don’t say that you have forgotten me.”

 
“I don’t recall—” began Rollison, but stopped abruptly, backing a pace, staring at the narrowed eyes, hardly able to believe what his ears told him and what his eyes began to confirm.

  “I see you haven’t,” said the other, softly. “May I come in?”

  Rollison drew back another step, held the door open, aware of a constriction at his throat.

  “Ye-es. Yes, come in.”

  Charmion entered the flat; a very different Charmion, looking twenty years older than the man who had been in dock; his mouth had lost its ripe redness, his eyes were dull but still a peculiar brown, and his hair – as he removed his hat Rollison saw that at once – was clipped close to his head, leaving only an ugly quiff above the right eye. He spoke out of the comer of his mouth and moved forward with a queer, almost shuffling gait, as Rollison stood to one side.

  Charmion stood in the middle of the small dining-alcove, hat in hand. He accepted a cigarette and a light, but did not move until Rollison said: “Sit down, Charmion.”

  “Thanks.” The way the one side of the man’s lips moved was grotesque. He went to a chair, smoothed his coat beneath him, and sat down, but he did not relax. Rollison stood by the mantelpiece, looking down on this wreck of what had once been a man about whom women had raved, who had been lionised and almost worshipped.

  Charmion’s eyes were narrowed and watery, and red-rimmed. There was no expression in them, unless, thought Rollison, there was a suggestion of bitterness; but it was the bitterness of a man so devoid of feeling that it was a hardly conscious emotion.

  “Well?” asked Charmion. “Are you satisfied?”

  “With what?” asked Rollison.

  “What you’ve done to me.’

  Rollison said, with an effort: “I don’t see it that way, Charmion.”

  “No-o?” The man’s lips twisted, mostly on the left-hand side, evidence that he had spent so many years talking but saving himself from being heard except by his near neighbour. “You wouldn’t, Rollison. When I knew what you’d done I felt like murder. If I could have got at you in court I would have killed you with my bare hands.” He smiled, mirthlessly. “Oh, what is the use of talking like that? You would have bested, me, of course; you were on top of the world then, probably you still are.” He looked round the well-appointed recess. “You’re wealthy, aren’t you?”