“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid you have the wrong house, no Betty Driver lives here.”
“Oh,” she said, and her face dropped and she looked younger and woebegone. Then she backed away and looked up at the number painted on the fanlight, a clear, black 24 in letters six inches high. She looked back at him. “This is number 24, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, but I assure you—”
“But she must live here, she told me she did!”
Jim would have laughed, but for that little look of dismay and distress. There was no one named Driver here, and he was quite sure that Mrs. Blake would not have taken another lodger without first telling him.
“I’m awfully sorry.”
“But—but it’s absurd, she told me.”
“I’m sorry,” Jim repeated more briskly, “but Mr. and Mrs. Blake live here, and neither of them is in just now. I’m the only other occupant of 24 Middleton Street, and my name isn’t Driver, it’s Jones.”
“Jones?” She seemed to breathe her disbelief into the name.
“James Matthison Jones,” he repeated firmly. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“Oh, well,” she said, as if she wasn’t really convinced. “Well—oh, well, all right, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“It’s no bother,” Jim said, and waited until she had turned away and was on the pavement, before he closed the door. He gave a mirthless kind of laugh as he went back to the kitchen, sat down and discovered that he’d forgotten the table-napkin, and decided to make do without it. The food which had been so hot was now almost too cold, but he finished it, and pulled a dish of apples and custard towards him. He was weighing into the rock cakes again when there was another ring at the front door bell.
“Well, this is a night for callers,” he said, and went along quickly. It crossed through his mind that the girl might have come back, but the shadow against the glass was of a tall man.
He opened the door.
He recognised the massive man who had been on the bus, had first gone ahead and later turned the corner behind him, but he did not think beyond that; there was no outward cause for fear.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Your name Jones?”
“Yes.”
Jim had never seen anyone move more quickly. The man shot out a fist and thumped him on the nose. The blow sent him staggering, and the pain brought tears flooding to his eyes. He banged up against the wall. He heard the door slam, and could just make out the figure of the tall man, blurred through those tears. He put up clenched fists and struck out, but it was like striking a whirlwind. He felt a cruel blow at the side of his jaw, pain which no ordinary knuckles could have caused streaked through his cheek and head. He took another blow on the chest, so fierce and savage that he cried out.
Gasping and struggling, he tried to back away. The misty blur in front of his eyes was tinged red, and he felt as if every breath was tearing him apart. Then one blow smacked his head against the wall so heavily that he grunted, and lost consciousness.
He slumped down.
The tall man, who was breathing evenly and whose trilby was still firmly on his head, bent down and dragged him to one side, then opened the door. The little man was on the pavement, and he came hurrying in.
The door closed.
The little man looked down and said: “You’ve made a mess of him all right.”
“Go and lock the back door, too,” the massive man said. “We don’t want to be interrupted, do we?” He did not even glance at the unconscious man behind the door, but worked a brass knuckle duster off his right hand, smearing knuckles and fingers with blood as he did so.
The little man came back.
“Door’s locked,” he announced. “And Milly will ring the bell if anyone comes.”
“Okay, let’s get a move on,” the other said. “We’ll have a quick look round first, and then we’ll make it look as if they’ve had a visit from an atom bomb.”
As he spoke, he grinned, and the grin was not nice to see.
And outside, the girl who had come to find whether Jim Jones was alone in the house sat waiting for them in a small car.
CHAPTER THREE
Visitor For The Toff
The Honourable Richard Rollison, known to so many as the Toff, and who much preferred to be known as plain Mr. Rollison, read about the attack on James Matthison Jones in the newspaper the next morning, together with a number of other reports from the twentieth-century world of peace and goodwill. An old lady had been beaten up in her shop and robbed of three pounds ten shillings, seven youths had set upon one youth and his girl in a cinema, and the youth and the girl were in hospital—as was the man named Jones. There were other crimes of violence, both in London and nearby, and one or two stories of little incidents in Glasgow did not exactly brighten the morning’s newspapers.
He was at breakfast.
It was ten o’clock.
His worst friend must have admitted that he looked remarkably clear-eyed and clear-skinned for a man of forty-ish who had not come home until half past three; and they would also have admitted that whenever a woman called him handsome, the woman was right. It was a casual handsomeness at this moment, for although he had not shaved he had bathed. His hair was damp and curling more than usual and, if the truth were told, looking a little more grey at the sides than of yore. He read without glasses, and ate bacon and eggs and then toast and marmalade with the single-minded attention of the true English trencherman to whom breakfast was the foundation of a successful day.
Jolly, his man, came in from the kitchen with freshly made coffee. Some said that Jolly had obtained his post because in his far-off youthful days, Rollison had indulged a naive sense of humour, and Jolly had rhymed with Rolly. Whatever the truth of that, Jolly was now twenty-one years older. In those twenty-one years this flat, at Gresham Terrace in the heart of Mayfair, had seen some remarkable sights. It had also received some astounding visitors, many of them young and lovely, and had been redecorated five times, the last twelve months ago. The large walnut desk which seemed to fill one side of the room had not been changed; most of the pictures were old friends of the Toff and of Jolly, too, but the most remarkable thing that had happened in those twenty-one years was visible on the Trophy Wall.
This wall, behind the desk, was like a Black Museum from some unchronicled Scotland Yard. Here were all the exhibits the police could ever expect to find in trials of murder and general wickedness, and a few that no one would expect. For instance, the nylon stocking with a run sealed by nail varnish; and the chicken feathers, and the top hat with a bullet hole in the crown. Most of the trophies were lethal weapons, however, ranging from automatic pistols to knives, and poisons, and the piece de resistance was a hangman’s rope. The knowledgeable whispered that this had really hanged a man: when asked, the Toff always said of course it had, he kept nothing synthetic here.
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.