Sometimes fear of what the Toff might do led to a widespread campaign to discredit him in the East End; once or twice it had come near to success. It might happen again but, as he drove from the clinic to Bill Ebbutt’s place, Rollison did not think it would happen for a long time.
He did know that already the whisper of his latest visit was spreading, in rooms, houses, pubs, billiards-saloons, doss-houses, warehouses, shops and factories, throughout the docks and along the Thames and the Thames-side. A simple, good-humoured whisper, creating the same kind of feeling that came when you went to bed with the knowledge that you would awaken to a fine, bright day. He would have been less than human had it not pleased him.
* * *
Bill Ebbutt was a massive man, getting on in years and showing it physically but with a mind as keen and alert as it had ever been. He was a connoisseur of beers and ales; of boxing; and of invective. Of these three, he loved boxing most. That was why he, some years earlier, from the high state of landlord of the Blue Dog, had become the sole owner of Bill Ebbutt’s Gymnasium. This was behind the pub—a large, square wooden building with a corrugated-iron roof and it looked rather like the clinic. The entrance faced a side street. There were always several old men standing about, smoking their pipes or chewing their Old Nod, waiting for opening time when they could wet their whistles on beer which had to be good to be sold in the Blue Dog.
Inside the wooden building a huge room was fitted up as a gymnasium which would not have disgraced a public school or a leading professional football club. Parallel bars, ropes, vaulting-horses, punch-balls, chest-expanders, locked rowing machines—all the impedimenta of a gymnasium were there. In addition there were two rings, one at each end—the second ring was a recent installation, Bill’s latest pride. In the farthest corner from the door a little room was partitioned off and outside was a single word: Office, printed badly and fading. Bill was the most approachable man in the world when outside but, ensconced in the tiny, over-crowded and over-heated office, the walls of which were covered with photographs of his young hopes or his champions wearing prize belts, he was as difficult of access as a dictator.
At nearly half-past six that day he was alone in the office, poring over a copy of Sporting
Life. He was wearing glasses and was still ashamed of it—that was one of the reasons why he hated anyone to come in. They were large and horn-rimmed and gave his ugly, battered face with its one cauliflower ear and its flattened nose the look of a professorial chimpanzee. His lips were pursed. Occasionally he parted them to emit a slow, deliberate term of abuse. Sometimes he would start and peer closer at the tiny print, as if he could not believe what was written there. Occasionally, too, he clenched his massive fist and thumped the table which served as his desk.
“The blistering son of a festering father,” he breathed and thumped. “The pig-eyed baboon. I’ll turn ‘is ‘ead rahnd so ‘e don’t know wevver ‘c’s comin’ or goin’. The flickin’ fraud, I’ll burn ‘im.”
There was a tap at the door.
“Go a-way!” he roared without lifting his head. “The perishin’, lyin’, ‘alf-baked son’ve a nape. No boy o’ mine ever won a fairer fight. To say ‘e won on a foul—”
There was another tap.
“I told yer to ‘op it! “Op it, or I’ll slit yer gizzard, yer mangy ape. Look wot ‘e says abaht the ref Strike a light! I’ll tear ‘im to pieces. I—”
The man outside was persistent but the third lap had a lighter sound, as if timidity had intervened.
“Go an’ fry yerself!” Bill slid off his chair. “Why, if I ‘ave ter tell yer again—”
“Bill, look aht,” came a plaintive whisper. “She’s just comin’ in. Don’t say I didn’t warn yer.”
“I’ll break ‘im up inter small pieces an roast ‘im. The ruddy, lyin’, effin’—”
The door swung open and a diminutive woman dressed in tight, old-fashioned clothes with a flowering skirt which almost reached her ankles and a wide-brimmed straw hat in which two feathers, scarlet and yellow, bobbed fiercely, entered the office. Bill started and snatched off his glasses.
“So you’re still at it,” said the woman, her mouth closing like a trap as she finished the sentence. “You know where you’ll end up, don’t yer? You’ll end up in ‘ell.”
“I don’t want none of your fire-an’-brimstone talk, Lil,” growled Ebbutt. “If you’d seen the way they’ve torn the Kid apart, you’d want ter tear a strip orf ‘em yerself.” His tone was conciliatory and his manner almost as timid as the third warning tap. “Wotjer want?”
“I thought you would like to know, Mr Ebbutt, that a certain gentleman is going to pay us a visit,” said Bill’s wife, in a tone of practised refinement.
“I don’t want ter see no one, unless it’s that perishin’ boxing correspondent. Then I’d—”
“I will tell Mr Rollison,” said Lil, and turned on her high heels.
Ebbutt blinked. “ ‘Oo? ‘Ere! Come orf it, Lil; ‘ave a n’eart, duck. Is Mr Ar arahnd?”
“I thought you was only interested in boxers,” said Lil with a sniff.
Ebbutt slipped his arm round her waist. Standing together, his mountainous figure dwarfed her lath-like slimness. They were in the open doorway. A few youngsters were training, one smiting a punch-ball as if it were a mortal enemy and another doing a series of somersaults. Round the walls lounged men in shabby clothes and no one appeared to take any notice of the Ebbutts.
“Take it easy, Lil. Do me a power of good, Mr Ar would. No one I’d rather ‘ave a chat wiv.”
“And I suppose I ought to feel honoured,” snapped Lil.
“Come orf it.” Ebbutt squeezed her waist and she looked up at him with a quick, teasing smile.
“That ‘Igginbottom rang up,” she told him. “You was engaged at the office, so he got through to the pub apartment. Mr Rollison’s coming to see you and he wants a room ready for a stranger.”
“Gor blimey! Wot’s ‘e up to?”
“I expect he’ll tell you, when it suits him,” said Lil. “Wants a nurse, too. It looks as if someone’s in trouble. I told Mr ‘Igginbottom I would arrange all that was necessary, I was sure you wouldn’t have no time. Annie will take him in.”
Ebbutt scratched his chin.
“Annie’s okay. Not a bad idea, Lil, ta. Where are you goin’, all toffed up?”
Lil drew herself from his grasp, gave her coat a pat and bobbed her feathers.
“You can find me at the Harmy Social,” she said. “And I don’t want to find you drunk when I get home.”
Ebbutt didn’t wait to see her royal progress across the gymnasium, passing the men who stopped what they were doing and touched their forelocks or smiled and, according to their social status, called her Lil or Mrs Ebbutt. Nor did he wait to see the amused grins which followed her into the street. He went back into the small office, folded up Sporting Life, forgetful of his rage against the boxing correspondent, and sat down to wonder what the Toff wanted now. He was fiddling with his glasses when a diminutive man wearing a grey polo sweater and a pair of razor-creased yellow trousers sidled into the room and coughed.