Salute The Toff

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21177, 29 July 1940, Page 4

Salute The Toff

OUR SERIAL STORY

BY JOHN CREASEY

CHAPTER XVlll.—(Continued) His head was clearing when the show was over. Taken completely by surprise, the Tike Retter's gang had, been helpless against Delray and the reinforcements he had brought, from the Mile End Road pub. Torches were flashing, Delray was bending over a little heap of men—quite unconscious for there had been ! no quarter—and a monstrously fat i man, lessee of the Three Kings, loomed out of the gloom. “Blimey, Guv’nor, yer nearly caughta packet that time!” “I’ll say,” gasped the Toff. “I’m not sure whether I’m whole or not. Get my flask out, Sam.” Sam slipped a whisky flask from the Toff’s hip pocket, and a sip or two of the spirit did wonders. The Toff replaced it himself, and lit a cigarette. “Good work, Sam, I knew I could rely on you. How many of them have we got?” “A whole bunch.” Sam lifted a fat fist, with the fingers clenched, i and grinned. i “Five, eli? Sort ’em out, will you?” j “Shaw!” said Sam. The Toff discovered almost with surprise that he could walk without assistance. He called “Pete!” as he bent down over Wellward. “Is he all right?” asked Pete. His face was cut from jaw-bone to chin, - and he looked a lot more murderous ! than when Rene Wellward had seen him earlier in the evening. “I think so. Go over to those ’ cottages, will you, and push the doors open. There might be a woman or two inside, but they won’t argue.” The open doors spread a murky, yellow light on the scene, and the Toff was able to look about him, getting the results cf the scrap firmly in his mind. He sniffed. Abraham Redsmith had disappeared; that was expected. Tike Retter himself had, also managed to get away. Sir Bruce Wellward was unconscious, but only from the result of a blow with a black-jack over the head, and he would come round very soon, dazed, Startled, and more worried than ever. But what had Wellward been doing at a riverside dive at ten or eleven o’clock at night? “I Had a Note ” “It—it was like this,” gasped Wellward. He had been gasping practically all the time since he had recovered consciousness, and he still looked dazed. Perhaps that was because he had seen his niece when he had reached the Gresham Terrace flat. “I—l had a note. This after- i noon. Don’t know how it was delivered—but—it came. Told me to go to the Robo Club—you know. In Shaftesbury Avenue.” The Toff knew the Robo Club, and scowled. It was a place of bad repute, patronised for the most part by the type of stage-folk who never worked but always borrowed, and was as unsavoury a club as there was in the heart of London. No one was really sure why the police had not managed to raid it successfully enough to get it closed down. “Been there before?” he asked. “Great Scott, no! Terrible place—women dancing almost naked, Roilison! Sorry, Rene, my dear. But— j well, I thought Rene was still in the hands of those devils, Roily, and the ! letter said it was about her. Well, j I went. And a woman told me that j I had to follow her. In a cab. Well, j I didn’t like it, but I agreed—things looked so bad for Rene and ” j “We can take it as said why you went,” murmured the Toff. He no longer looked badly battered although . his face was bruised and cut, and i decorated with plaster. Pete Del- j ray—sitting remarkably near Rene j Wellward —looked a much worse sight. A doctor had left the flat ten minutes before, after patching them up. The five gangsters were in McNab’s hands—but not until after the Toff had realised they could give no information, excepting that they worked for Tike Retter. McNab was accordingly delighted—for it seemed a safe bet that the prisoners had taken place in one cinema raid at least. 1 “That’s good, that’s good,” mutter- : ed Wellward. He took a weak whisky-and-soda, and seemed better ■ for it. “Well, I agreed to go with ’ this woman—it wasn’t that creature ; Cardew—and then her cab disap--1 peared. That must have been quite close to the place where you found 1 ' me, Richard. My cabby disappeared ! ; —l’d got out to try and see where \ we were, you see—and before I knew , anything else I heard that little man speaking. Did you see his knife, ■ Richard? I thought ” The Toff laughed, perhaps unkindly. “It would have been nasty in the ribs, but you were lucky,” he said. 1 “The spot seemed a hell of a lot worse afterwards, but the luck ot the Rollison’s persisted, and Pete j Delray was damned smart. He seemed to dislike you. Redsmith, 1 mean.” “Redsmith?” “Yes. The owner of a shop in the Mile End Road, next to the cinema. ; The shop where Meldrum and Irma were nearly caught out, and our little man wasn’t so innocuous as he managed to make the police think. But listen, Bruce. Cards on the table ' and, what-not. Redsmith said: ‘lt’s , a long time overdue.’ Is there anything behind that, as far as you know?” Wellward frowned. “I can’t think of anything. Reelsmith—Redsmith! I don’t seem to know the name, and I certainly didn’t recognise the fellow. Of course, in business, you make a lot of enemies who are complete strangers to you.” ; “You don’t often make the type j of enemy who’ll stick a knife in your I back, Bruce. Anyhow, if you don’t know what he meant ic can’t be help- j ed, but 1 had an idea that it was j more personal th i the other show. ! In any case, if he’s the boy behind i the attacks and the whole game, he’d { want you alive not dead.” Wellward shuddered. “That means—someone else?” “I don’t know,” said Rollison. “Anyhow, I can't imagine that you’ve got much to fear from Abraham Redsmith. Well, despite everything, there were two policemen following you this evening, but they were lost in Limehouse—in short, they were followed, and shanghaied before jou left your cab. McNab found them