Each trophy was from a case on which he had worked; some, from cases on which he had nearly died. A few came from investigations where he had actually worked with the approval and the blessing of the police. Most of these were of recent date, for either the Toff or the police had mellowed, and he had always had one supporter at the Yard, in Superintendent William Grice.
Superintendent Grice, according to three of the five newspapers which Rollison glanced through, was in charge of the investigation into the attack on James Matthison Jones at 24 Middleton Street, S.W.
Jolly poured out coffee while Rollison read, and turned to leave, silent as any wraith. When he was at the door, Rollison murmured:
“Jolly.”
“Sir?”
“How are you this morning?”
“Very well, sir, thank you.”
“Good. Mind working?”
Jolly, coffee pot in hand, turned back to the breakfast table, which stood in a window alcove, overlooking other houses and other flats; the street window was on the other side of the room.
“As far as I know, sir.” He was cautious. “Read the newspapers?”
“I have perused them lightly, sir.”
“You mean you’ve read every line under the heading of crime. What strikes you as being odd?”
“Mr. Grice being engaged on the matter of the assault at Middleton Street,” Jolly answered promptly.
“Why is that odd?”
“One would have expected the Divisional police to deal with such a matter, sir, not Scotland Yard, and certainly not a senior Superintendent.”
“You couldn’t be more right,” agreed Rollison, and pushed his chair back and took cigarettes from his dressing gown pocket. “Jolly,” he went on, “I have a confession to make. I have been dreaming beautiful dreams. I am tired of the sordidness of the Big Smoke or the Great Metropolis, whichever you prefer to call it. I long for the freshness of unsullied crimes, where young men do not get bashed over the head and old women are not murdered for a few bob a time, and gangs of hooligans do not set upon a boy and girl, simply because the boy, once one of them, has fallen in love with the girl. I do not think that I am greatly taken by this modern age, Jolly, particularly on a morning like this. Is it my imagination, or is London much, much worse than it was?”
Jolly kept a rigidly straight face except for the movement of his lips.
“It is your imagination, sir.”
Rollison eyed him thoughtfully, and then said: “Oh, is it? For that you may spend today looking out the newspapers of the—what date is it?”
“May the seventeenth, sir.”
“May the seventeenth of each of the last twenty-one years. We’ll have the
“Thank you, sir,” said Jolly. “Would you like more coffee?”
“Please.”
Jolly poured.
“Will you excuse me now, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, sir. May I ask whether you have read this morning’s newspapers?”
This time, Rollison was silently speculative for a long time. So far neither master nor man had allowed himself to smile, each remaining quite poker-faced. Whenever they played a game like this, it was seldom that either relaxed. Rollison studied Jolly, with the sorrowful-looking brown eyes, the rather wrinkled skin, the scragginess under the chin which suggested that he had once been fat but had recently wasted away. Jolly’s lips were sensitive, and although there was a kind of dyspeptic look about him, his was a face that most people liked.
“Yes,” said Rollison at last. “I have perused the newspapers.”
“Did you observe the name of the employer of the man, Jones?”
Slowly and as if painfully, Rollison said: “No.”
“I imagined that had escaped your notice,” said Jolly, magnificently bland. “In the
“Yes, indeed,” said Rollison, and did relax and chuckle. “All right, your game, Jolly. The chap works for Jepsons. Where do we go from here?”
“I have no idea, sir.”
“Except that if the Jepsons have a problem they’ll probably bring it to us,” said Rollison, and stubbed out his cigarette. “Do we need to labour for our pieces of gold?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How much in the kitty?”
