The Toff And The Stolen Tresses

Rollison moistened his lips, but didn’t speak.

“I didn’t think it would take long to make you shut your trap,” Wallis growled. “You’ve done all the talking you’re going to do, to the cops or to Ebbutt or to anyone at all. You’re as good as a dead man.”

Rollison thought: “And he believes it.”

Rollison could believe it, too.

There were still the knives, one clasped with a steel band round his right forearm, the other round his left calf; it was not the first time that those hidden weapons had stood between him and disaster. If he could shift the one on his arm so that he could grip it, one thrust would settle Wallis, and the men upstairs would not expect to see him appear, with or without a knife.

“Let me tell you something,” Wallis said. “You’re one of the best-known men in London. I’ve made quite a study of you. So’ve a lot of other people. There isn’t anything important about you that we don’t know.”

He was on the bottom step now. The inches beneath him made him seem enormous, and helped him to tower over the Toff. He was still beyond striking distance, although one lunge would bring him within it. Rollison began to flex the muscles of his right arm to work the clasp down. He had done this a dozen times before, and it was almost possible to guarantee that within fifteen or twenty seconds the knife handle would rest against the palm of his hand.

He could feel it coming down; feel the wooden handle on his flesh, the cold blade also.

Wallis sneered: “You can’t get away with a thing,” and as he said that, there was a swift movement behind Rollison, hands gripped him, two men appeared from the dark void. One held his right arm outwards while the other pulled back the sleeve.

There was the knife.

Now get the one off his leg,” Wallis said. He stared at Rollison with his eyes glittering, in his way a handsome devil.

But the key word for Wallis was powerful. A man pulled up Rollison’s trouser leg, and found the knife.

“You can keep them as a souvenir,” Wallis told them. “Take him in the cellar.”

One man switched on a light which came from an unshaded electric bulb hanging from the ceiling of the cellar. Beneath a small coal hole, or iron grid, was a heap of coal for the fires; there were also two or three cans of petrol and paraffin, explaining the oily smell, and some wooden boxes piled on top of one another. Several of these boxes had printing on them but Rollison did not notice the word Jepson on any.

Along one wall was a bench with a few tools on it, including a cobbler’s last and some rubbery soles and heels. On another side was a similar bench, thick with cobwebs and dust. An electric train set stood on this, the rails loosely fitted, the train itself half covered with a piece of cloth.

The two men stayed behind Rollison.

The worst thing was that he did not know what Wallis would do; every moment was an ordeal by waiting. He could see hatred in the man’s eyes, could even understand it. What he could not understand was the delay: did Wallis realise that every second of delay was torture, worse in some ways than an attack itself ?

At least Rollison was standing on his own two feet, and no longer swaying. The light shining upon Wallis’s face cast shadows which made the man look horrific. That might be intended to add to the menace, but in a queer way it struck Rollison as funny; the overloading of a situation, so that the sinister could become almost ludicrous. It was not so marked as that, but it eased Rollison’s tension slightly. If Wallis had intended to attack as he had attacked so many others would he have waited? None of the stories of what had happened suggested that he would.

Why the delay?

“You’ve seen some friends of mine,” Wallis said, with sardonic humour. “Any of them talk?”

“None of them talked,” Rollison answered. “Some of them talked,” said Wallis. “I was just asking a rhetorical question. Rickett talk?” Rhetorical was a good word for Wallis. “Nobody talked,” Rollison insisted.

“They name me?”

“I named you, and they wouldn’t confirm or deny it. That was good enough for me, but it wouldn’t be any good in court.”

“No one’s ever going to get me into court,” Wallis said. “You’re lying. Rickett talked. Rickett told you about Bishopps. You want to know how I found that out? I talked to Bert Smith. The only question you asked was whether he did any work for Bishopps. Think that was smart, Rollison? Because I don’t. It proves to me how much wind you are. If you’d been smart you’d have asked a dozen questions.”

Rollison saw the magnitude of that mistake, and prayed that Ebbutt had sent help to Rickett quickly. He had been too keyed up, too viciously angry about what had been done to Jolly, and emotion had overcome logic.

“All right,” he said, “it wasn’t smart.”

“You aren’t so good at anything,” Wallis sneered. “How much do you know about Bishopps?”

“All I know is that everyone except Jones and the Blakes had some association with them,” Rollison said.

“What else?”

“What else is there?”

“There is another thing,” Wallis said heavily.

“You may as well talk.”

Rollison said abruptly: “There’s no other thing, Wallis, and I’ve talked enough.”

Wallis could have struck at him then, and actually fondled the knuckle duster on his right fist, but he did not strike. The cellar was quiet but for the breathing of the four men, although there were sounds from outside: not loud, all muffled but unmistakable. There were people walking, and now and again an extra clang on the iron cover