Salute The Toff

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21157, 5 July 1940, Page 5

Salute The Toff

OUR SERIAL STORY

BY JOHN CREASEY

CHAPTER Vlll.—Continued. Time passed with agonising slowness for the Toff. Fifteen minutes went by before the door opened, and out of his half-closed eyes he glimp- j sed Meldrum, that imperturbable, sardonic and sarcastic cinema magnate gone wrong. “0.K., Baas?” Charlie’s English had its limits. “Is he still flat?” “Sho\ Baas.” Meldrum stepped to the bed, and suddenly pulled at the Toff’s eyes: the lids fluttered and dropped back. Meldrum was satisfied; he had not previouslj r met a man who could control his eye muscles. “Bind and gag him, and get him to Whitdchapel,” Meldrum said. “Sure, Bass. When do I do de work, uh?” “In good time,” said Meldrum suavely, “all in good time. I want him alive at the shop, understand? No tricks.” “Nossuh!” Charlie was positive. And the Toff had learned one thing of importance —there was a shop in this business. Moreover, Meldrum was getting him away from Yelton Gardens alive. He believed the crook was making sure there was no annoying accident, such as the arrival of the police. Meldrum was not a showy exponent of the art of crime, but he was damnably thorough.

1 Another Chance Yet the Toff was prepared to stake his life on another chance. He felt Charlie lift his legs and bind his ankles, without moving or making a protest, but when the nigger started on his wrists, he groaned and opened his eyes. The smiling face of the knifing-nigger looked down on him and a vast hand pressed roughly into his face. “Pipe down, bo’, or ” In a movement that would have fascinated the Toff at any moment, and make his stomach crawl now, Charlie moved his right hand to his waist and away again. The knife in it flashed down, not an inch from Rollison’s throat, and Rollison did not have to feign a jump. Charlie | beamed. “Yuh see, Bo’, I ain’t no one to play wid. Come yer wid you’ hands.” He grabbed the Toff’s hands, pulled the cords so tight that they bit viciously into the flesh, and beamed. Rollison ground his teeth and writhed, but again that vast brown hand pushed into his face and a moment later a strip of sticking plaster was pressed across his mouth. Try as he might the Toff could not speak, but his eyes spoke for him. Charlie stood back and admired his handi- j work, pressed another bit of plaster at one corner, and rubbed his hands | noisily. “Some chicken, eh, bo’? Doan you ) worry, yuh woan feel nuttin’. Much, added Charlie, and the Toff really shivered. God, he had asked for this, but had he taken on more than he could handle? It was impossible to tell, but in the next five minutes he went through an ordeal that should have turned

him grey. A large trunk of the cabin-type was standing in one corner. Charlie hauled it close to the bed, opened it showing that there were no fittings inside. He still rubbed his hands from time to time, and winked at the Toff. He was a simple soul, was Charlie, with simple pleasures. “Jos’ a good fit, eh, bo’?”

The Toff tried to shout a protest, and he found it hard to convince himself he was just showing Charlie that he was afraid, for fear was in his bones. The nigger grinned more widely than ever and pucked him one-handed from the bed. He prished the Toff to the bottom of the trunk bent his legs back at the thighs and doubled his knees. The Toff was struggling and wriggling, but Charlie bore with it patiently until the Toff’s foot caught him on the funny bone. The Toff had never seen flaming anger like it. The nigger’s face was distorted with a beastiai fury, and he simply raised a foot and pushed downwards at the Toff, like a man treading down a newly-filled hole. Pain sheered through the Toff and there was sweat on his forehead, but the single kick seemed to relieve Charlie.

“Yuh see, Bo’. I ain’t no one to play wid.” He shook his head reprovingly, and then pulled the lid. The Toff told himself in that moment that he had gone too far, that he should never have let himself get into Meldrum’s hands. And then a saving thought flashed through his mind: Meldrum’s order that the Toff was to be alive at the Whitechapel shop. The lid banged down. Darkness came like a shroud, the lid pressed against the Toff’s knees, driving them into his chest, cramping him so that every muscle in his body seemed to burn. But he had burned practically every boat he had.

For five minutes he could not think, the cramped horror of his position was all that entered his mind. The trunk had ample ventilation, for the air was not yet stuffy. A small mercy that sent something of the usual, carefree confidence back. Yet all the time there was a nagging fear in his heart that he had gone too far. He had no idea how long it was before the trunk was lifted and he was carried downstairs. He could hear voices and knew that the trunk was being pushed into a van. An engine started and the Toff felt the vibrations as they shook the van, but that was nothing to the jolting and bumping after it started. The journey was a nightmare that I could not last long, more even than the Toff could stand. He must have been conscious for ten pain-wreck-ed minutes, and then blackness enveloped him. At that moment the van was crossing Piccadilly Circus. The journey lasted for another twenty minutes and the driver stopped outside a shop in the Mile End Road. The Toff did not know it, but Charlie, who had been sitting in the front, clambered down, hoisted the trunk on his shoulders and marched it i through the shop. Mr Redsmith —Abraham Redsmith I —was sitting at a bench covered j with dusty second-hand books. He I looked up” and nodded without a comment, Traffic roared by, men and women scurried past, while Charlie took the trunk to the top floor of the house and dropped in on the floor, seeing no call for gentleness although the Boss wanted the guy alive. (To be continued)