by John Creasey
Rollison cut the knots.
Jolly stared at him mutely; almost as if he were pleading. There remained the adhesive tape; that had to be taken off with spirit, and there was some in the bathroom. Rollison lifted his man to the bathroom, sat him on the stool, and then took out the bottle of spirit. It was cold on his fingers as it evaporated.
“It’ll sting a bit,” he said.
Jolly nodded.
After a few minutes Rollison held one corner tightly, and then pulled the tape off; and it came away in one go. He felt Jolly wince, and saw tears of pain fill his eyes, but except for a pale patch round the lips where the adhesive of the plaster had been, there was nothing to show.
“Don’t try to talk for a while,” Rollison advised, and went out, fetched whisky from the big room, and poured out a tot.
Jolly sipped and savoured it, then drank. Rollison gave him a second nip, and Jolly finished this, but shook his head at the offer of a third. In a voice which was little more than a croak, he said: “I shall be all right, sir.”
“You’ll be as right as ninepence,” Rollison agreed, and began to massage his man’s ankles and wrists.
Jolly sat silent and tight lipped, obviously in acute discomfort; but that would not last. Soon a little colour returned to his cheeks, and the glistening which betrayed the tears of pain became dry.
“I caught the man they’d left behind to deal with me,” Rollison said. “How many were there?”
“Two, sir,” Jolly whispered.
“Did they injure Dwight?”
“I don’t think so, sir, but they frightened him.”
“They meant to. How did they get in?”
“It—it was my fault entirely, sir,” confessed Jolly, and looked as if that were a cause of shame greater than he could bear with equanimity. “They—one of them—represented himself as a detective officer. He was rather like Detective Sergeant Spencer, and the card looked genuine. I wasn’t surprised that the police should want to talk to Mr. Dwight, and there was no way of being sure that you would dissuade them, so—I unchained the door. He attacked me immediately.”
Rollison said: “There’s no need to talk so much.”
“I’m perfectly all right now,” said Jolly, who looked as if he could faint at any moment. But his voice was a little stronger as he went on: “Dwight knew nothing about it; he was in his room, sir—he had just finished bathing. The men fastened the adhesive plaster almost before I realised what they were doing, and—well, it was obvious that they were expert at trussing.”
“Yes, they were,” said Rollison, almost musingly. “Then?”
“They heard Mr. Dwight whistling, and went into him. I couldn’t see what happened, but I heard a great deal. He was absolutely terrified, sir. Terrified. He began to whimper and try to scream, but they made him come out of the room when he was dressed, and took him out the front way. They left the door open. One of them came back in about five minutes and searched the flat exhaustively, sir, but—” Jolly paused, and something like a smile curved the lips which must still feel painful. “I think he missed the soap.”
“Soap?”
“With the impression of the keys, sir. I put the soap at the bottom of our stock. I think there’s a good chance that it’s still there.”
Rollison said gratefully: “I told you earlier that you get better and better, Jolly. Did they say anything?”
“Nothing of any significance at all,” Jolly assured him.
“I managed to work one of my hands free and was edging towards a telephone when the man noticed me. He tied the cord tighter, and carried me and—er—placed me in the dustbin, sir, to his obvious amusement. At least—”Jolly broke off.
“At least what?”
“The bin had been emptied only this morning,” Jolly announced.
Quite suddenly he was smiling, and Rollison was chuckling; for a few moments they were genuinely lighthearted. That mood did not last for long. Jolly began to move about more freely, walked unsteadily to the kitchen and massaged his own sore wrists and ankles. Rollison put on an old suit, returned to the kitchen, turned out the gas, and dished up a casserole which had been cooking throughout the whole of the upheaval. He did not go to the door of the closet where the prisoner was held, and the man did not call out. Jolly insisted on laying the table, but Rollison made his man sit down and eat with him. They ate in a tense and deepening silence. Rollison had never been more preoccupied, and suddenly broke a long silence almost roughly.
“Could we be suffering from delusions too, Jolly?”
“I don’t understand you, sir?”
“First a motorcyclist appears to shoot at Dwight, but although we hear the shot we find no trace of a bullet. Next two men attack me and toss me into the Thames, but—”
Jolly exclaimed: “They did what, sir?”
“Hence the trousers you saw me in,” Rollison said, and grinned again. “But they did it in full view of the Yard, with a dozen or more people in sight. They’d laid on their escape smartly enough, but it wasn’t what it looked like—simply an attempt to kill me. They must have known that there was a good chance that I would be pulled out in time. In the water I didn’t think so, but in fact help was there in a few seconds—and I wasn’t hit heavily over the head. Was it a fake attempt—meant to scare and not to kill?”
“I see what you mean,” agreed Jolly, thoughtfully.
“Now we have this,” Rollison went on. “They could have killed you and they could have killed Dwight, but they didn’t. What do you get out of all that, Jolly?”
“They are reluctant to commit murder, sir.”
“Just want to frighten, not to kill—but they think it’s a good idea to create the impression or the illusion that they are killers, and so make the fear greater.” Rollison finished a piece of Dorset blue, and pushed his chair back. “Is that how you see it?”
“It certainly does seem possible,” Jolly replied noncommittally.
“That’s about as far as it goes,” Rollison agreed, and took out cigarettes. Jolly smoked very occasionally, and then always small cigars. He was looking very much better, and his voice was almost back to normal. “I wonder how long I ought to leave the johnny in the john,” Rollison went on, musingly. “He didn’t look the kind to scare easily, but there’s nothing like a few hours of solitary confinement to loosen a tongue. I think I’ll nip over to Dwight’s place first, then go and see Bill Ebbutt, and come back here about eleven o’clock. The chap should be in a mood to talk by then.”
“Are you sure you ought to go out again, sir?”
“I’m sure nothing could keep me in, Jolly. I feel as if we’re being pushed around with lots of malice, and I don’t like it at all.”
He stood up from the table and strode to the telephone on his desk; the dining alcove was off the living-room. He dialled a Whitechapel number, and was answered by a man with a wheezy voice, who sounded both breathless and aggrieved.
“Ebbutt’s gym,” he announced.
“Bill,” said Rollison, and momentarily the wheezing stopped. “Rollison here,” Rollison went on. “Can you let me have a couple of your brighter boys for a few hours? We’ve run into trouble, and I don’t want to leave Jolly alone while I’m out.”
“Pleasure,” answered Bill Ebbutt, and there was no longer the slightest note of grievance in his voice. “Anythink I can do to help, that’s me. Coupla big boys?”
“Big bright boys, Bill.”
“Good as done,” declared Ebbutt, wheezing between each word. “I’ll send ’em over right away. Better keep a couple in reserve for you, too, from what I ’ear of things.” He gave a roar of laughter, and so told the Toff that he had already heard of the incident on the Embankment. “How’s my pal Jolly?”
“Bearing up in the face of grave misfortune,” Rollison answered, and paused for Ebbutt’s gust of laughter; it ended in a choking wheeze. “Bill, there’s a little job which you may be able to help with on the quiet, too. Don’t say anything to any
one else yet, but think about it so that you’ll be primed when I come. Right?”
“Close as a n’oyster, that’s me,” Ebbutt asserted.
“Thanks. It’s about young Benning. Do you know anything about him or the family?”
“Well, as a matter of fact Benning comes to the pub for a drink now and again, I’ve had him in the gym; nice stance ’e’s got, and plenty of what it takes. I would have said ’e was the last chap in the world to do anyone in, but facts is facts, and I know ’e was ’ere with the Fryer girl a couple of weeks ago. What do you want me to find out?”
“All you can about him, his family, and Isobel Cole,” Rollison answered.
“Right chew are,” said Ebbutt. “That the lot?”
“What do you know about the motor-cycle mob, Bill?”
“Not much,” Ebbutt said, “except that they’re not any of the regular boys. Don’t worry us much, and we don’t worry them. I—” He broke off, and a moment later, Rollison heard him say farther away from the mouthpiece: “I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Ar. Bit o’ trouble in the gym; I’d better go and slap somebody dahn. So long.”
Rollison heard the receiver go down, and replaced his own, slowly. Ebbutt was always having bits of trouble in the gym, and this probably meant nothing more than that: but coming at this juncture, it was almost alarming. Rollison saw Jolly looking at him intently, as he stood up.
“Ebbutt will send a couple of men over to keep an eye on things,” Rollison said. “I think I’ll change my mind and go and see him first. I’ll go on to Dwight’s place from there. Lock the door and don’t let anyone in unless you know who they are for certain.”
“You may be quite sure of that, sir,” Jolly declared, with firm emphasis; and his cheeks turned faintly pink. “May I—”
The telephone bell rang.
“I’ll answer,” Rollison said, his hand still on the receiver.
He lifted it and announced himself, watching Jolly, and wondering exactly what was in the man’s mind. Before he had finished speaking he forgot that, for a man with a Cockney accent cried: “Mr. Ar, Bill Ebbutt’s being cut up. Can you come over quick?”
Then the line went dead.
Chapter Eight
The Gym
Bill Ebbutt was a mighty man, both to look at and by repute. He was one of East End’s “characters”, knew that and played on it, and yet remained one of the most likeable and popular men of Aldgate Pump. He had three loves: his gymnasium and boxing; his wife; and Richard Rollison, whom he had known for very many years. To him, the Toff was always Mr. Ar, and to him, Mr. Ar was the supreme example of the genleman who really knew his way about. They had met when the Toff had been simply the Honourable Richard Rollison, fresh from Cambridge, wearied of the Mayfair smart set, a useful man with his fists, an engaging man with his grin, and a brave man with his love of adventure. They had first been on opposing sides, and then learned to like and respect each other; and now there was nothing that Ebbutt would not do for the Toff, and little if anything that Rollison would not do for Ebbutt.
Ebbutt, moreover, had a large forefinger on the pulse of that peculiar and amorphous district known as “the underworld”. That descriptive term gave him and Rollison a great deal of amusement, and yet each acknowledged that there was such a place, although it could not fit into any topographical boundaries. It was like a shifting island in an ever-flowing sea. There was patches of it in the West End and patches in the East; and there were patches also in the most superior suburbs as well as the dockside slums. Ebbutt’s particular empire spread far and wide, for he was acknowledged as the best trainer in the pugilistic world of London. Many promising boys reached him, from Hampstead Heath and Highgate, from Putney and Parsons Green. He was a strict trainer, and nothing displeased him more than a man who had competence but no heart. One of the tragedies of his life was that he could never find a heavyweight with a ghost of a chance of taking the world title from across the ocean. He still nursed the desire to do that as a young girl nurses a dream, but his hopes were thinning with his hair. He was very nearly bald, in fact, and that made him look peculiar, for he was a huge man with an enormous punch, tapering off southwards towards small and almost dainty feet, and northwards towards a huge double or treble chin, broad cheekbones, and a small cranium, which looked smaller because of the shiny pate. One small pink ear was very slightly cauliflowered, but his hands were the hands often described as a surgeon’s; small, pink, and well kept.
He was in his tiny office, separated from the gymnasium by a small weatherboard partition and a glass door. Beyond the door was the sawdust ring, the punching balls, the vaulting horses – all the impedimenta of a fully equipped gymnasium. There were very few “boys” in to-night, it being so warm; the river and the open fields had called them. But as darkness came they would drift in, some to see Ebbutt, some to train or spar, others to go a few yards towards the corner and the Mile End Road, where Ebbutt’s public-house, the Blue Dog, did a roaring trade and paid the expenses of the gym.
There was a smell of sweat and embrocation, of leather and leather polish, of sawdust and of beer. There was a faint haze, too, from the two elderly men who were smoking; no one in training was allowed to smoke while inside the corrugated-iron walls of this sanctuary.
When he had rung off from the Toff, Ebbutt had heard a scuffle in the doorway, leaned his great bulk forward, and seen two men breasting their way in. That was not unusual. There were other gyms and other trainers, and there was a kind of feud between some of them. There were also the “boys” who got steamed or liquored up, and who came simply to throw their weight about, crack a few heads, do a little damage, and then go off in high spirits. So these two arrivals did not worry Ebbutt, although they puzzled him, for he did not recognise either.
They were biggish men, they were tough, and but for their arrogance and the way they pushed two middle-aged men aside, Ebbutt would have been glad to see them. They looked as if, with training, they could become very useful “boys” indeed, and easy to match for fifty pounds a fight, win or lose. They saw him, and came swaggering across; and that was really the first moment when Ebbutt felt a twinge of alarm. He did not like their confidence nor the sense of purpose which seemed to lie upon them. One of his cronies, a little man who had acted as second to more boxers than he had years, strutted up to the newcomers, thrust out his chest, and stood in front of them. Another, a more cautious man with a matt of grey hair, approached Ebbutt and said out of the corner of his mouth: “Dunno that I likes the look o’ this.”
“S’all right,” Ebbutt said, quietly; and then he saw one of the newcomers dart towards the perky second, who obviously did not expect serious trouble. The three youngsters here for training and a few old stagers were some distance from the spot, none of them prepared for trouble, for there had been no apparent threat of it.
The newcomer smacked his fist into the second’s face; and as his arm moved, Ebbutt saw the dull, brassy gleam of knuckle-dusters. The metal smacked sickeningly into the second’s jaw.
Ebbutt let out a roar which had no words but the clearest possible meaning. For a large man, he could move with considerable speed, and he was even quicker off the mark than usual. He threw himself forward, knowing that the men would move aside, allow him to pass, and try to trip him up – if he let them have their way. Instead of going straight at them, he swerved to the right, and towards the man with the knuckle-dusters. And instead of using his fists like flails, he threw his whole weight at the man, carrying him bodily backwards. As he struck the floor with the back of his head he would probably lose consciousness, and so leave only one attacker to deal with.
The first part of the stratagem was completely successful. The man crashed down, and Ebbutt, judging skilfully, clutched at the top rope of the ring and kept his balance. Had there been only the two men, he would have been triumphant on that instant; but several others were at the door, and he saw a flurry of fists and feet, sticks and chairs; then a flood of men came surg
ing in, spreading all over the gymnasium, leaping into the ring itself. The few faithfuls there with Ebbutt went down before the onrush, and Ebbutt was so astounded by the weight of the attack that he lost a chance to floor the second of the two men who had attacked him.
He turned.
He saw one of the men with a knife in his hand; and like the Toff had earlier, he felt fear.
He heard shouting, screeching, thumping, the rending noises of splitting canvas and of breaking chairs. He knew that the raiders were here to break the place up. He saw men with hammers and axes hacking at the wall-bars. He knew that when this was over there would be nothing left of his first love, and he felt a furious rage against the perpetrators of this raid. He knew of no one who hated him enough to do this; of no reason for it.
But above all these things was fear of that knife. There it was, poking towards him, with a blade broad at the hilt and narrow at the point, held so that the electric light glinted and scintillated from it. Yet the man holding the knife did not come on at once; he seemed to fear that Ebbutt still had the power to crush him. But others were coming, and Ebbutt knew that some were getting towards his flank, to make sure that he could not escape.
He threw himself at the man with the knife. If the blade swept upwards it would stab deep into his flesh, and he knew that he was near death. But he saw the man flinch, and struck at the knife. His fist met the blade. He felt a searing pain, of flesh and bone; but the weight of his arm carried the other’s hand away, and the knife dropped. Ebbutt heard it, drew back, and stamped on it with his great weight. He heard it snap. He saw men leaping towards him, but none of them appeared to be carrying knives; most held sticks and two more knuckle-dusters. He gave a great, bull-like bellow of sound, and flung himself forward again. The blood from his wounded hand splashed into the faces of his attackers, and stained them with scarlet. His weight and the expression on his face combined to drive them back. Two tried wildly to hit him, but he was hardly aware of it. He struck at the man who had used the knife, and saw him fall. He was gasping and wheezing, his mouth was wide open, and now he threw all that he had learned and all that he had taught to the winds, and used his arms like flails. He knew that he could not last long. A man leapt on his back and began to batter him about the head, and the pain of that was almost unbearable, but he did not stop striking out.
